I've been plagued this month by people who seemingly aren't listening to a word I say.  Now admittedly sometimes what I have to say may not be worth hearing ... but that is not always the case. And for the purposes of this blog, we will stick with a sleep patient and leave my husband's deafness out of the loop. Case in point: I call ...

Many sleep technicians don't know how insurance works. They don't understand what insurances cover and which insurances need authorizations before giving equipment or performing tests. To them, this is an issue just for the billing office and the scheduling desk. I have found that the more I understand about our field and the way we are paid, the ...

The best time of the year for teaching sleep is Sleep Tech Appreciation Week, Oct. 4-10. My goal is to inform doctors and the community that walking around tired all the time is not normal.The AAST has a page dedicated to Sleep Tech Appreciation Week. On it you will see how others have celebrated, activities such as a crossword and word search, a ...

With the increase in unemployment here, we have seen more people refuse studies. Patients don't want to spend money on as many tests and do not have the money for their new higher deductibles. But people are spending more on things to help keep them healthy.It made me think that maybe we need to start calling sleep studies preventative medicine. ...

The increase in sleep awareness has lead to more PSGs performed on patients with co-morbid conditions. We recently saw a COPD patient having an exacerbation and a patient with a mental disorder and possible seizures as well as several patients with anxiety and depressive disorders. All these patients required a great deal of skill by the ...

We have several new doctors performing bariatric surgery in our area. As a result, we're seeing an increase in the number of super obese patients in the sleep lab. By and large, this is not a problem. The only real difference in care is they tend to need a fan and many more pillows in order to get comfortable and go to sleep. However, I've ...

It happened when I was sitting with my son on the couch watching TV. (Something that does not happen often as my son is 17 and I am not cool.) While we were watching Bones, a commercial for Men of a Certain Age came on and I saw what I thought was something amazing. There on the character's nightstand was a CPAP machine.  I was ...

I love my patients, but I have to admit there are some patients that make this job more challenging. They are not the patients with severe apnea or the patients who do not believe they have apnea; They are the patients who do not have anything.  You know the ones I am referring to: you put them to bed, you read their questionnaire, and ...

Have you ever considered that fact that as sleep technicians and respiratory therapist and anyone else who deals with sleep and CPAPs that we are probably the world's greatest salespeople? The biggest part of my job is scheduling, ordering CPAPs,and telling patients they need to come back for a second study because they have sleep apnea. In my ...