Padda Institute is roughly five miles from Ferguson. Our main office at 4477 Woodson Road, Suite 100, St. Louis, MO 63134 is a short drive south, and our Bridgeton office on Natural Bridge Road is a similar distance west.
The direct route is I-170 south to the Natural Bridge or Woodson Road exit. Surface streets work equally well — Natural Bridge Road runs west from Ferguson toward both offices, avoiding the highway entirely if you would rather not merge. Both offices have ground-level parking on site.
Chronic pain in north St. Louis County is often managed with medication alone, frequently because the alternative was never offered rather than because it was tried and failed. Interventional treatment is that alternative: identify the structure generating the pain, confirm it with a diagnostic block, then treat that structure directly.
When the source is confirmed and treated, medication requirements usually fall. That is the point of the exercise.
This is worth setting out plainly, because it is the single most common source of confusion about what we do.
Dr. Gurpreet Singh Padda, MD, MBA, MHP is board certified in addiction medicine as well as interventional pain. That combination is unusual, and it exists for a specific reason: the physician deciding whether to reduce your medication should be the one qualified to manage what happens when it is reduced.
What that means in practice:
What we will not do is simply continue an existing prescription without addressing the underlying pain. If that is what you are looking for, we are not the right practice, and saying so up front is more respectful than saying it after you have made the trip.
An emergency room can rule out an emergency, and that is genuinely valuable. What it is not set up to do is work out why your back has hurt for eight months. Long waits and a prescription at discharge are the usual outcome for chronic pain presenting to an ED. We keep same-day appointments open for that reason.
Bring any imaging you already have — ideally the images themselves on disc or through a patient portal, not only the radiologist’s report. The report is one physician’s reading of a picture; having the picture means it can be read again against your actual symptoms.
Bring a current medication list, including doses and how long you have been on each. And bring a short account of what has already been tried and what each attempt actually did. If an injection helped for three weeks and then wore off, that is diagnostically valuable — it suggests the right structure was found and the question is duration, not target. If it did nothing at all, that points somewhere else entirely.
Patients who arrive with that information frequently leave the first visit with a confirmed plan instead of a second appointment to gather it.
No. The first visit is a consultation and examination. Any change to medication is discussed, planned and monitored, not imposed.
Coverage varies by plan. Call and our staff will verify your specific benefits before you come in, so there are no surprises.
Not from us. Some plans require one for coverage; we will check yours.
Often at the first visit, at least provisionally. Confirming it may need a diagnostic block, which can sometimes be done the same day.
Call (314) 481-5000 or request a time. Most major insurance, including Medicare, is accepted.
Prefer not to fill in a form?
Same-day and emergency appointments are available.