- December 20, 2024
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From a young age, Baldwin Park resident John Gernert knew he wanted to pursue a career in health care.
Gernert’s great-grandmother was a midwife in the mountains of extreme western North Carolina in a rural, Appalachian town called Hanging Dog.
His great-grandmother worked with almost every member of the small community, and Gernert remembers hearing fascinating tales of patients and their stories of healing.
“Everybody, when they learned I was her great-grandchild, they always would have to tell me some kind of medical story, because she was the closest thing to there being a doctor in that part of the state,” he says. “The stories of her helping people who had been bitten by a snake, or children that were born, or any type of emergencies in this small little area, I got to hear first-hand.”
Now, Gernert is following in her footsteps with the opening of his practice, Orlando Pain Centers of Excellence.
“Potentially, if I do my job right, my patients’ lives are so much better,” Gernert says. “What normally happens is you have someone that is at a high-functioning place in their life where they’re doing great. Then, they have an injury (or) a surgery, and all of a sudden, they have terrible pain. Not only does chronic, severe pain lead to depression — you lose your friends, you lose your ability to work, you lose your ability to get out and do things — but everything starts spiraling down. Some of these patients I see have been going down for years of their life. When they come in here and I offer them the possibilities of my practice, for the first time in years I’ve shown them something other than opioids. An injection that is going to give meaningful reversal of the downward spiral that their life has been. I can instantly see a change in the patients I see come in my office. By the time they leave, they’re like a new person. It’s the most extraordinary and rewarding moment. I get a blessing, the office gets a blessing, the families get a blessing and the patient gets a blessing.”
TRAINING
Originally from Murphy, North Carolina, and growing up in east Tennessee, Gernert attended the University of Tennessee.
He completed his post-graduate education at Tulane University School of Medicine in New Orleans. He then completed his anesthesiology residency at the University of South Florida.
Following his anesthesiology residency, he elected to further specialize in the field of interventional pain management.
Gernert was accepted into USF’s pain-management fellowship program. There, he completed an additional one year of intensive training in the art of alleviating patients’ acute and chronic pain.
That’s when he knew one day he wanted to have his own office working on interventional pain treatments.
Gernert moved to Orlando to take a job with Orlando Regional Medical Center.
He was one of the five interventional pain physicians that treated chronic and acute pain patients at the hospital and with affiliate M.D. Anderson Cancer Center.
He left the hospital to pursue his dream in interventional pain management full-time.
“I enjoyed the aspect of getting to talk to people, and I didn’t really get to do that when I was just putting them to sleep,” he says. “I’m good with a needle, and I enjoy using that God-given talent to help cure people with their pain.”
NEW PRACTICE
Gernert opened Orlando Pain Centers of Excellence in spring 2022. There, Gernert employs interventional pain management, which uses minimally invasive, needle-based therapies to improve a patient’s quality of life.
Gernert and his team use a multi-faceted treatment approach to prevent the downward cycle often seen with patients afflicted with pain. The office uses numerous, therapeutic options but specializes in neuromodulation.
The practice treats myriad pain types, including spinal, back, neck, peripheral neuropathy, complex regional pain, PTSD, musculoskeletal, nerve and muscle.
Gernert specializes in spinal cord stimulation therapy, as well as spinal cord and dorsal root ganglion stimulators.
“It’s going to change the world of pain management,” he says of dorsal root ganglion stimulation. “DRG stimulation uses equipment, which is implanted in your spine under your skin, to send mild, electrical impulses to the area of a DRG in your spine. This stimulation can make the DRG create more ‘red lights,’ which blocks pain signals from that area traveling to your brain. It’s an amazing piece of technology, but it’s brand new.”
In addition, Gernert is one of the only doctors in the area who offers in-office kyphoplasty, the surgical filling of an injured or collapsed vertebra. This procedure restores original shape and configuration and relieves pain from spinal compression.
BALDWIN BLESSING
Orlando Pain Centers of Excellence is accepting new patients. Gernert says he wants patients to know when they’re desperate they should seek help.
“Let me at least try to help you,” he says. “I’ll try every time. Every single patient. I don’t care if they have insurance or not. If they are desperate and they come to me for help, I’m going to try to do my best.”
Gernert has lived in Baldwin Park since 2004 with his wife, Kimberley, a real-estate specialist with Keller Williams in Winter Park. When they’re not working, the couple can be seen fishing on Lake Baldwin with their three sons or walking their dog, Rocky.
