Not sure WHERE your at. But generally: X-rays, CAT scans, MRI's & the "readings" of any of or all of these imaging, within 2 years old. Plus the intake fee. Can range from $150 - S400. A pharmacy chosen beforehand. And start making a list of "pain maintenance" clinics for your area. Alot will have "walk-ins accepted" posted in them, but no ad or anything else will indicate this! Try for the clinics that have their intake paperwork available for download. This way you can look through it to make sure there is no fee for "background checks" involved. This will shoot you down even if your criminal record does NOT contain drug violations mostly! Also, when filling out medical paperwork, and the entry for your social security number? DOES NOT have to be filled in! I do NOT ever put mine down & have never been asked for it except once. My response is always I am not comfortable with it, since even my back surgeon's office in a VERY LARGE affiliate hospital was "hacked" 3 years ago and everyones information was stolen!!!
Prepare yourself for the intake day. You will have to offer a urine sample. Even if you are a current patient with another pain clinic and your transferring, most require you piss clean! NOTHING in your urine! So if you have a daily habit, your going to have to deal with that first because 3-4 days of drying out is going to leave you sick. You SHOULD know this.
Also, paperwork is going to include a front/back of the human body outline and you will have to place different pen lines, squigles, and lines with strikes thru them to indicate burning pain, shooting pain, and just deep/arthritic pain so be ready to mark this accordingly, and to be ready to discuss these areas as they are affected. You are having to teach the provider about yourself so verse yourself mentally before hand about what types pain, what areas, etc... you have to live with.
Last, but NOT least. People that use "pain maintenance" are expected to know their treatment enough to know what they need. You shouldn't just sit quite when the prescribing part comes around. If you have had, or you do have enough of these conversations it will be apparent when the conversation gets to this point when the prescribing is at hand. I always suggest what I need. Leaving what doseage they want to start you out at up to them. I just switched providers recently because after a major surgery the Dr. did not want to change my meds, and even if he had it would have been 3 months of taking me down to nothing, then 3 months of getting back to a treatable milligrm amount. With just having a laminectomy/fusion at L5-S1, and fusion at L3-L4, with 6 screws being placed in the lumbar in between to regain the loss in spacing between discs and such.... along with my current ailments this was IMPOSSIBLE. So I switched to a previous provider and received what I asked for with a slight downgrade in milligram doseage amount on my IR requested which will go back up next month.
I know this has been long winded. Hope it helps you some.
It takes ALOT of work, and yes, it can be like a "shot in the dark" sometimes. I hope & pray you do not run into what I term "fake providers" where they have "pain maintenance" in their name but don't want to prescribe opiates! My provider I just switched back to has an open intake policy. Other words, I paid $200, including drug test but if I was not prescribed what I wanted it would be refunded.
Good Luck!