Pain Medicine

Pain Medicine has a physical presence across all of the major UCSF Health campuses in San Francisco. On the inpatient side, three distinct Acute Pain consult services exist at Parnassus, Mission Bay, and Mount Zion and one Chronic Pain consult service covers all sites. With the Mount Zion Hospital serving as a new hub for orthopedic surgery, the Acute Pain service at Mount Zion focuses on incorporating high-impact, efficient regional anesthesia into the peri-operative care of patients undergoing surgery at Mount Zion. 

On the outpatient side, the UCSF Center for Pain Medicine, our department’s premier outpatient faculty practice, will finally be moving out of its aging physical plant at 2255 Post Street on the Mount Zion Campus. While our patients, faculty, and staff have many fond memories from the past 30+ years at this location, we are looking forward to a move and expansion to the Bayfront Medical Building. Planning for this change began in Spring of 2021, when leaders from the Division and from the clinic were presented a 9,308 square foot shell on the 4th floor which was to become the new clinic. The new space, which we have crafted specifically for our group – even picking the colors and some of the artwork—will include 4 procedure rooms, three of which will have C-arms, 3 infusion bays, 6 pre- and post-procedure holding areas, 8 clinic rooms, 5 flexible telehealth rooms, 2 psychology offices, a group treatment room, a trainee workroom with floor-to-ceiling windows, and much more! 

The Pain Medicine OR block time will also transfer from Mount Zion to Bayfront, no doubt allowing enhanced efficiency for our faculty who see patients and perform procedures in clinic and do surgical pain procedures in the ASC just a few floors away. Furthermore, we anticipate that as we move into our new space, we will benefit from a substantial increase in our non-provider staffing, something made possible in part by considerable effort over the past several years to improve operations and finances of our center.  

We will also use the opportunity of the move to rebrand and modernize the name of our clinic, to the UCSF Center for Pain Medicine. In future updates, we will look forward to providing an update on the many ways we are thriving in our new location.

Chris Abrecht, MD
Chief of Pain Medicine
Medical Director, Center for Pain Medicine