Practice Profile
Cumberland Oral Surgery
Nashville, Tennessee
An oral surgery practice that rebuilt its post-operative pathway around opioid-free recovery.
- Founded
- 2015
- Focus
- Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery · Implantology · Anesthesia
- Leadership
- Dr. Nathan Whitfield
About
Dr. Nathan Whitfield’s practice made a decision in 2018 that has since become considerably less unusual: it stopped writing routine opioid prescriptions after third molar surgery.
The replacement is not a single drug but a pathway — pre-operative analgesia, long-acting local anesthetic, a written schedule the patient can follow without deciding anything at 2 a.m., and a phone number that a human answers.
What Makes Them Stand Out
- Patients leave with a printed hour-by-hour medication schedule for the first forty-eight hours.
- The practice calls every surgical patient the following morning, and the call is made by the surgeon or the anesthetist, not a coordinator.
- Whitfield publishes the practice’s post-operative pathway openly for other surgeons to copy.
Leadership
Dr. Nathan Whitfield, DMD, MD
Oral & Maxillofacial Surgeon
Nashville, Tennessee
Stopped writing routine opioid prescriptions in 2018 and published the pathway that replaced them.
