Evidence status: CURRENTLY LINKED BY THE PRACTICE / FORM REVISED OCTOBER 18, 2016. Athens Spine Center’s live Office Policies page currently links its Controlled Substance Agreement. The PDF itself carries a revision date of October 18, 2016.

Quick read

Athens Spine Center’s agreement is much more detailed than Georgia’s statewide written-agreement requirement. It regulates dose changes, storage, early/lost/stolen medication, outside prescribing, alcohol and other substances, drug screening, pill counts, pregnancy notification, driving after dose changes, information sharing, missed appointments, tapering, and participation in the practice’s pain-management program.

Who is on the provider side

The agreement is issued by Athens Spine Center, PC. The practice’s current provider page identifies Benjamin McCurdy, MD and Daniel Thomas, MD as board-certified in Pain Medicine and Anesthesiology, along with Mandy Eichenlaub, PA-C, Kaylan Bifaro, FNP-C, Melissa Tolbert, NP-C, and Beth Woolard, FNP-C. The agreement itself is a practice form and does not identify a single named prescriber.

Terms that matter most

  • The patient agrees not to change the medication dosing schedule without authorization.
  • Medication must be kept away from children or irresponsible adults.
  • Lost or stolen controlled-substance medication will not be refilled early, even with a police report.
  • Controlled substances are to come from Athens Spine Center; outside pain medication after hospitalization or emergency care must be reported.
  • Alcohol use with narcotic prescriptions is prohibited by clinic policy, and sedatives require disclosure to the prescribing physician.
  • Detection of illegal substances or undisclosed prescribed medications may lead to termination as a patient.
  • The patient agrees to random pill counts and urine, saliva, or blood screening at the physician’s direction.
  • Two missed appointments may result in discharge from the practice.
  • The agreement contemplates tapering when controlled substances do not produce demonstrable functional or quality-of-life benefit.
  • The patient authorizes the practice to obtain and use medication-history information from pharmacies, insurers, healthcare operations, and other physicians while the patient remains active.

Georgia rule versus clinic policy

Georgia Rule 360-3-.06 requires a written treatment agreement in defined chronic-pain prescribing and separately requires monitoring. It does not itself state that every Georgia agreement must contain Athens Spine Center’s lost-medication rule, alcohol policy, two-missed-appointment discharge rule, generic-medication preference, pregnancy notice, 72-hour driving restriction after dose changes, or its precise information-sharing language.

Important wording issue in the form

The PDF refers to “Georgia Pain Rule 360-36-.6.” The current Georgia Composite Medical Board pain-management rule is Rule 360-3-.06. The agreement’s form revision date is 2016, so the rule citation on the form should be read as historical/practice wording rather than relied on as the current rule citation.

Monitoring distinction

The agreement states that patients must comply with requested testing and describes testing within a 90-day period. The current state rule now says covered patients should be randomly monitored at least annually by bodily-fluid analysis while separately requiring clinical review generally every three months, subject to the rule’s current exceptions. The practice agreement and current rule therefore should not be treated as word-for-word equivalents.

Primary sources

← Georgia Contract-for-Care Evidence Library

Reviewed: October 4, 2026.

Evidence boundary: Current public linking is verified; the form itself states it was revised in 2016. This page records written terms and does not determine enforceability or how the agreement was applied to any individual patient.