Dr. Joshua Prager M.D., M.S.
California Pain Medicine CenterPast President of the North American Neuromodulation Society
Joshua P. Prager, MD, MS, is a board-certified pain medicine physician at California Pain Medicine Center in Santa Monica, California. Dr. Prager was born in New York City and completed his pre-medical studies at Harvard University in Massachusetts. He attended Stanford University School of Medicine, where he simultaneously received a master’s degree in management/health services research while attending Stanford Graduate School of Business.
He then completed internal medicine training at UCLA and anesthesiology training at Stanford Medical Center and Harvard Medical School at the Massachusetts General Hospital. He is board certified in internal medicine and anesthesiology and is also board certified in pain medicine through both The American Board of Anesthesiology and The American Board of Pain Medicine. Dr. Prager has held full-time positions on the faculty of Harvard Medical School at the Massachusetts General Hospital and at The David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, where he was the director of the UCLA Pain Medicine Center.
Dr. Prager is currently the director of the Center for the Rehabilitation of Pain Syndromes (CRPS) at UCLA Medical Plaza. He is a faculty member in the Department of Internal Medicine and Anesthesiology at UCLA. Dr. Prager is a past president of the North American Neuromodulation Society (NANS).
Dr. Prager has delivered the Decade of Pain Lecture at the American Academy of Pain Medicine annual meeting. He received an award for leadership and contributions by the California Society of Anesthesiologists and is editor of its continuing medical education program on pain and end-of-life care. In 2012, he received the lifetime achievement award from the North American Neuromodulation Society and in 2013 received an award for his dedication and contributions to the field of neuromodulation from the INS.
Dr. Prager has twice received awards in the Department of Anesthesiology at UCLA for support in teaching in the fellowship in pain medicine. He has received the Bounty of Hope award by the Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy Society of America for patient care and contributions to the CRPS community. He served as a pain expert for the California Department of Worker’s Compensation in developing guidelines to treat the injured worker.
Dr. Prager believes that voluntary work is an important component of his career. He has volunteered internal medicine care at the Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic as well as providing anesthesia for Third World children undergoing correction of congenital anomalies through the Organization Interplast. He served as a consultant to Medicare on a local level and currently serves on the national level. He has lectured extensively and taught cadaver workshops in North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia.
His additional activities include serving as chair of one and participation in a second evidence-based medicine guidelines project, the chair of a best practices project, and the development of a revised treatment algorithm for CRPS. He is analyzing data related to the management of ketamine infusion side effects for the treatment of CRPS as well as depression. His most recent publication in the Journal of Pain Medicine reviews the use of ketamine infusions to treat CRPS.
Dr. Prager’s clinical practice focuses on CRPS, neuromodulation, and precision spinal diagnostics and therapeutics. He has run an active ketamine infusion for the last years and has administered over 2300 ketamine infusions. Since 1998 he has managed a comprehensive interdisciplinary functional rehabilitation program designed to return normal function to patients with complex regional pain syndromes and other pain problems that involve central sensitization. He is currently participating in a research study examining brain activity before and after ketamine infusions utilizing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).
In addition to his clinical practice, Dr. Prager has also served under oath as a medical expert witness in many cases such as pain and suffering, worker’s compensation, and disability.
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Phone
(310) 264-7246
Hours
Mon - Fri: 8am - 5:00pm
Sat - Sun: Closed
Holiday Closed Dates
Address
2001 Santa Monica Blvd
Ste 1280-W
Santa Monica, CA 90404