I am concerned and frustrated this week. I keep hoping to find that magical sweet spot between DME's and patients. Our city has about 10 different DME companies and as you might expect, service can vary greatly. It can be a challenge to understand exactly what takes place at the DME. I know the patient is given RX for therapy and usually a copy ...

There is a huge failure rate for CPAP therapy; some would even say it is as high as 50 percent. That number is being used by insurance companies, home sleep testing companies, and people who do not believe in sleep apnea to prove that we are testing too many people and spending too much money. But we're not. The failure rate results from our ...

NON-COMPLIANT: Failure or refusal to comply, or in the medical community it can be the degree to which a person follows medical advice.  Is it just me, or are we sleep magnets for/to the non-compliant?  I had a person today make me laugh out loud.  We called her to schedule a repeat titration study and she refused the appointment ...

I attended another health fair today. I typically am involved in about 6 or so per year. Health fairs, for me at least, take on their own personality or theme. This one today for example had a lot of healthy people in attendance. A big employer for our state and just really nice people to be around ... so why am I sitting here so ...

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 ...

We all know that the preferred method of treatment for obstructive sleep apnea is CPAP therapy.  Unfortunately convincing our patients of this can be anything but easy. With the increasing demands to do more with less reimbursements, it behooves us to think outside the box to motivate people with obstructive sleep apnea to comply with ...

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. ...

I have mentioned before that I want to get involved with sleep and respiratory on a larger scale. Well, the opportunity hit me a couple of weeks ago when I was asked to attend the tri-county school board meeting. In attendance were representatives from the two community colleges, the area university, the local hospitals, a community member, ...