A physician who has spent a career being right early — and often.
Board-certified anesthesiologist, fellowship-trained interventional spine and pain physician, national Key Opinion Leader, medical innovator, and founder. This is the full record.
Jay Joshi, MD®
Jay Joshi, MD®, also known as “Dr. J®”, is a nationally recognized, board-certified anesthesiologist and fellowship-trained interventional spine and pain management physician. He has distinguished himself through his reputation, education, experience, and national leadership — spanning advisory boards, CME and educational programs, peer-reviewed publications, and more than 700 speaking engagements. He is widely considered a national “Key Opinion Leader” in pain management, and has been featured across major television, radio, print, and online media.
A U.S.-born physician, Dr. Joshi was accepted into medical school at the age of 16 through an accelerated honors BS/MD program, with multiple scholarships. He completed an internal medicine internship at Northwestern and his residency and fellowship at Henry Ford Hospital — one of the busiest interventional training programs in the country.
Clinical practice
Dr. Joshi has served as Medical Director of Pain Management at a large Chicago-area hospital while simultaneously building a demanding private practice. He has cared for patients from across America and around the world — many of whom had been unable to obtain a correct diagnosis or meaningful outcome from other physicians, hospitals, and universities.
He precisely performs the full range of interventional spine and pain procedures, including epidural steroid injections, selective nerve root blocks, facet joint medial branch blocks, radiofrequency ablation, sympathetic blocks, spinal cord stimulation, and percutaneous discectomy — as well as ketamine infusions for intractable central-sensitization pain, regenerative medicine, and longevity medicine. He is known for a safety-first philosophy: smaller-gauge needles, tissue-sparing technique, dramatically reduced radiation, non-opioid sedation, and a refusal to perform higher-risk procedures that others perform routinely.
Advisor and thought leader
As a respected advisor, Dr. Joshi has provided scientific and strategic counsel to numerous pharmaceutical, medical device, technology, automotive, media, marketing, and incubator companies. He has helped hospital systems and physician groups build and improve their pain programs nationally, and is widely regarded as a thought leader on fraud, waste, abuse, and general healthcare reform.
Researcher and innovator
As a researcher, Dr. Joshi has contributed to projects that earned international recognition, and has led or been part of teams that were first to describe multiple medical innovations. He is a published co-architect of the unifying theory connecting the stellate ganglion to conditions once thought unrelated — including CRPS, hot flashes, and PTSD. His current research emphasis is central sensitization, which many consider the missing link in understanding chronic pain. Among his procedural innovations is the single small-gauge lateral approach to cervical facet medial branch block and radiofrequency ablation.
In regenerative medicine, Dr. Joshi has advanced numerous techniques — orthobiologic, platelet-rich plasma (PRP), autologous lipoaspirate stem cells, and exosome approaches — designed to help the body repair tissue and resolve pain at its source, delivered responsibly by a physician rather than marketed by a storefront.
The person
Beyond the credentials, Dr. Joshi combines clinical medicine, research, humanism, education, and unwavering integrity and ethics. He is also one of the very few interventional pain physicians to have formally studied Ayurvedic medicine — drawing on its whole-person philosophy while commanding the most advanced modern science. Past, present, and future of medicine, in a single practitioner.
The making of a category-of-one physician.
Accelerated Honors BS/MD
Accepted into medical school at 16 through an accelerated honors program, with multiple scholarships.
Internal Medicine · Northwestern
Completed his internal medicine internship at Northwestern.
Henry Ford Hospital
Trained at one of the busiest interventional programs in the country — anesthesiology residency and interventional pain fellowship.
World Health Organization
Worked with the WHO Department of Substance Abuse — the first U.S. pain physician to do so — and predicted the OxyContin and opioid epidemic.
DABA · DABAPM · FABAPM
Board-certified in anesthesiology and pain medicine; Fellow of the American Board of Anesthesiology Pain Medicine.
A record of firsts.
First U.S. pain physician to work with the World Health Organization’s Department of Substance Abuse, Geneva — contributing to a substance-abuse handbook distributed internationally years before the opioid debate became public.
Predicted the OxyContin and opioid epidemic in 1999 — and has never prescribed OxyContin or oxycodone in over thirty years of practice.
First interventional pain physician on the cover of Lancet Oncology.
Published co-architect of the stellate ganglion unifying theory — part of the research teams first to describe the stellate ganglion’s relationship to hot flashes, PTSD, thermoregulation, and CRPS.
Member of the research team first to describe reduction of hot flashes in breast cancer patients using stellate ganglion blocks.
Member of the research team first to describe reduction of smoking cravings using stellate ganglion blocks.
Inventor of the single small-gauge lateral approach for cervical facet medial branch block and radiofrequency ablation.
Built America’s first surgery-center-based outpatient ketamine infusion program; national expert in ketamine for central sensitization.
National expert in central sensitization — regarded by many as the missing link in chronic pain.
First anesthesiologist / interventional pain physician to formally educate physicians on counterfeit medicine, and to create an accredited CME series on it at PAINWeek — one of the country’s foremost physician experts in pharmaceutical anti-counterfeiting.
Youngest elected Chairman of the Clinical Board of Directors of the National Pain Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit.
Advocated for clinical recommendations adopted nationally as guidelines for proper pain management; part of the team that launched the Global Pain Initiative.
Considered a national thought leader on fraud, waste, abuse, and healthcare reform.
Lead physician for national broadcasts on neuropathic pain (2013) and twice in 2015; featured across major TV, radio, and print.
Mentor, MATTER Chicago; three-time Chicago Innovation Awards nominee (2007, 2008, 2010).
Inventor of multiple procedural techniques and creator of multimodal pain-management protocols; over 700 national speaking engagements.
Work with Dr. Joshi.
Expert witness engagements, advisory and consulting, speaking, and media.