A Pioneer of Pain Management
PHOTOS BY MADI ELIZABETH | DEVELOPED IN PARTNERSHIP WITH LIPSON PAIN INSTITUTE
When Ana Delia Hernandez arrived in Spain after fleeing the communist rule of Fidel Castro in Cuba with her young daughters, Ana and Teresita, she didn’t have a dollar to her name, but she had a plan.
She went to the abbess of a convent and proposed to offer the nuns her professional services in exchange for a place for her and her daughters to live.
“She went out for her day job, but she was on-call for all the nuns 24/7,” Dr. Ana Lipson said of her mother, who was an OBGYN physician. “In exchange, we got a room, we got food and we got free babysitting because when she went to work we got to hang out with the nuns.”
More than five decades later, that anecdote explains a lot about how a young lady from Cuba who earned a doctoral degree from a university in the Dominican Republic became a trusted leader in pain management by making a plan to overcome the odds and building the right relationships to do that.
Since 1999, Lipson Pain Institute has brought patients hope by managing pain through a multifaceted approach. To diagnose and treat patients, Lipson Pain Institute uses a comprehensive method that includes evaluation and diagnosis, medication management, targeted procedures, physical therapy, lifestyle changes, regular exercise, psychological support and specialist coordination.
“It’s like a toolbox, and we have just so many tools, and we want to optimize all the tools so we can get the best outcome. Our goals are to treat pain, make [patients] more functional and provide a better quality of life.”
Her approach focuses on getting to know a person by examining their medical history, understanding the nuances of their daily experience and developing a plan of action with each patient to address their specific needs.
“It’s like a toolbox, and we have just so many tools, and we want to optimize all the tools so we can get the best outcome,” says Lipson, who is married to Dr. Eric Lipson, a pulmonology doctor at Watson Clinic. “Our goals are to treat pain, make them more functional and provide a better quality of life.”
Lipson said her team also helps patients navigate emotional disturbances that can come with chronic pain that includes impacts to relationships from loss of an active lifestyle or disruption to normal routines.
Her practice is distinctive, in part because of how she has taken her experience from residency programs in internal medicine and anesthesiology, as well as a fellowship in pain management at the University of South Florida, and melded it together to create best practices that created lasting results for patients, even through many changes she has experienced in the medical field.
Lipson officially entered the pain management arena in the late 90s, a time when there were only two pain management specialists in the Lakeland/Winter Haven area. To complicate matters, Florida became a breeding ground for the proliferation of “pill mills” in the early 2000s until the mid 2010s. That crisis led to many preventable deaths, so the pendulum swung back to where almost no one except pain management doctors could prescribe opioids, with many restrictive measures in place, giving Lipson Pain Institute the opportunity to stand out as a trusted community leader.
The Institute has established itself by becoming a preferred provider of a tight-knit network of healthcare professionals in Central Florida, in part because they pride themselves on being extremely responsive to referring physicians and to their patients. They receive referrals from a wide spectrum of specialists including but not limited to neurosurgeons, rheumatologists, neurologists, oncologists and thoracic
spine surgeons.
Dr. Ana Lipson credits much of her success to the wonderful example of her parents, Dr. Ana Gonzalez and Dr. Manuel Hernandez, whose stethoscope she proudly displays a on the wall of her office.
Lipson Pain Institute works with people experiencing everything from acute pain that can occur after operations or from diagnoses like sciatica to chronic pain that includes neck and back pain, as well as pain caused from cancer treatments and disorders like fibromyalgia.
Dr. Lipson and her staff help patients develop realistic expectations for pain management from the beginning and share how things like restorative sleep and diet play significant roles in long-term outcomes.
“Often I tell them, you’re never gonna be pain free—I can’t guarantee that I can fix your problem,” she says. “But I tell them, I want to improve the quality of your life in some way and I know I can do that. So if they can feel hopeful, that is huge.”
One of the great joys for Dr. Lipson in this season of her career is leading the Polk County Women Physician’s Group, a growing group of nearly 150 female physicians that Dr. Lipson started in 2022 alongside her good friend Dr. Ritu Aparajita.
“The main purpose is to provide support, network and educate, as well as have a voice in the community,” she says. “When I was growing up, the doctors would have all these social functions to network…I remember my parents would have gatherings and they would go out to dinner with all their colleagues. We really support each other, we refer each other and we work together to strengthen our community.”
Dr. Lipson is genuinely appreciative of and humbled by the success she has had, in part because she intimately understands the hard work it took to get there—and not just hers. In Dr. Lipson’s office hangs a framed stethoscope, a memento from her late father, Dr. Manuel Hernandez, which is placed between photos of her parents, as well as their diplomas from medical school.
“I feel so humbled that I’m able to do this and that life has set me on this journey,” Lipson says with a warm, appreciative smile. “With a lot of struggle because obviously there was a lot of struggle to get there because my parents came from a communist country and there was a chance I would’ve never made out of the country—and to be able to come to this country and have this opportunity. I am just grateful and humbled and happy.”
One of Dr. Lipson’s great joys is supporting and mentoring other female physicians in Central Florida, including through leading the Polk County Women’s Physician Group, which some members of are shown here during a Galentine’s Day event earlier this year. Right: Ana with her son, Mark, daughter, Rebeccah, and husband, Eric.