Sports Medicine
The Physician Athletes Come to When They Need to Get Back
Sports medicine and athletic pain treatment at Newport Pain Management. H. Rand Scott, MD — Medical Director. Newport Beach, California.
For nearly thirty years, professional and Olympic athletes have quietly found their way to Newport Pain Management. They come for a specific combination: a pain physician who was a high-level athlete himself, who trained in sports medicine on the staff of one of the country's premier college football programs, and who treats every patient — from the NFL veteran to the recreational cyclist — with the same clinical standards and the same discretion.
An athlete first, a physician second
I grew up in sports. In high school I played football, wrestled, ran track, and played volleyball. In college I played football at Penn State under Coach Joe Paterno, and was a member of the 1982 team that won Penn State's first consensus national championship. After college I coached high school football before medicine took over.
That background is not decoration on a bio. When an athlete describes what hurts and how, when it started, and what they've already tried to play through, I've lived those conversations from the other side. Injury vocabulary, training language, the internal calculus of "can I finish this season" — none of it needs translation in this office.
Sports medicine training at a premier football program
During medical training, I completed clinical rotations in sports medicine specifically with the Penn State football team's medical staff. Working inside a Division I football program teaches things no textbook does: how elite athletes actually get hurt, how their injuries present differently from the general population, and how return-to-play decisions get made in real time, under real pressure, with real stakes.
That framework carried into my anesthesiology residency, my subspecialty training in pain management, and every day of the practice since I founded Newport Pain Management in 1996.
A quiet track record with elite athletes
Since 1996, I have treated professional athletes from across the major North American leagues — NFL and MLB players, NCAA Division I athletes in football, baseball, volleyball, track and field, and other sports. I have treated Olympic-level speed skaters and Olympic distance runners.
I do not publicize the individual patients I have worked with, and I never will without their explicit written consent. Athletes come here in part because they know the practice will not use them as marketing. That discretion is part of the value.
What athletes need that ordinary pain care often misses
Athletes present differently. They have unusually high pain tolerance and a strong bias toward playing through symptoms, which means by the time an elite athlete reaches a specialist's office, the underlying problem is often further along than a routine physical exam would suggest. They also carry specific injury patterns — sports hernia and athletic pubalgia, chronic lumbar pain from repetitive rotational loading, joint pain from cumulative impact, nerve entrapments from muscle hypertrophy, post-surgical pain that has stalled in standard rehabilitation, central sensitization after multiple soft-tissue injuries.
Their treatment goals are different too. A serious athlete's benchmark for "recovered" is not "can get through the day comfortably." It is "can perform at the level that got me here in the first place." That reframes every treatment decision — from imaging thresholds to injection choice to rehab pacing to when to escalate to interventional pain management.
Conditions we specifically address in athletic patients
- —Game day performance
- —Sports hernia and athletic pubalgia
- —Chronic lumbar pain and disc-related radiculopathy
- —Sacroiliac joint dysfunction from rotational sports
- —Facet joint pain from repetitive spinal loading
- —Chronic hip pain, including pain related to labral pathology
- —Nerve entrapments in the shoulder, elbow, hip, and knee
- —Post-surgical pain that isn't resolving on the expected schedule
- —Complex regional pain syndrome following injury or surgery
- —Chronic post-concussion headache and cervicogenic head pain
- —Recurrent trigger point syndromes in high-training-volume athletes
For all of these, our interventional pain toolkit — targeted image-guided injections, diagnostic and therapeutic nerve blocks, radiofrequency ablation, spinal cord stimulation, and ketamine infusions for refractory cases through our KetaCure program — often becomes the difference between another surgery consult and getting back to training.
In-season pain management, within sport legal scope
Athletes at real competitive levels face a specific problem that general pain care isn't built for: the standard pain management options are often not compatible with in-season competition. Certain prescription anti-inflammatories can trigger league drug testing. Some injections have washout periods that don't fit a competition schedule. Common medications are prohibited under WADA, USADA, or league-specific rules. Others require a Therapeutic Use Exemption that takes weeks to secure.
Athletes don't get to pause competition for their pain treatment. They need a physician who understands the pain, understands the sport's rules, and can build a plan that respects both.
In addition to standard pain management, Newport Pain Management offers in-season consultation and game-day protocol planning for competitive athletes. That service includes:
- —Review of your sport's specific medication and treatment regulations — WADA, USADA, NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB, NCAA, Olympic and other governing body policies
- —Selection of pain management options that fit both the diagnosis and the sport
- —Timing of treatments and washout periods coordinated with your competition schedule
- —Therapeutic Use Exemption (TUE) guidance and documentation support when applicable
- —Sport-legal alternatives when standard options are prohibited — topical NSAIDs, targeted injections with acceptable washout periods, radiofrequency ablation, spinal cord stimulation, and other non-pharmacologic interventions
- —Coordination with your team physician, athletic trainer, and other members of your medical team
The framework of the Athletic Pain Treatment Pyramid still applies. What changes is the specific choices within each level — and the timing.
This is consultative work as much as clinical work. Whether you are actively competing, in-season and hurt, or planning a treatment window around an upcoming event, call the practice for a preseason planning consultation or an in-season adjustment.
The same standards for every patient
The reason serious athletes trust the practice with their care is the same reason every other patient should: we bring the same clinical rigor, the same diagnostic discipline, and the same range of treatment options to every patient in the practice. A weekend cyclist with chronic low back pain gets the same thorough workup as a Division I linebacker. That equalizer is a value, not a slogan.
Related reading on athletic pain
Schedule an evaluation
New-patient evaluations for athletic pain typically need a longer initial appointment — ask for that when you call.
Newport Pain Management · 1401 Avocado Avenue, Suite 101 · Newport Beach, CA 92660