Sunday, April 20, 2008

The Latest on Home Testing

I want to thank everyone who's been leaving comments about home testing. Currently the situation is unclear. It seems like a new LCD is written every week. If you have questions about what is covered in your state/Medicare region, I would encourage you to contact your local Medicare carrier or your state sleep society.

If anyone out there has successfully qualified a patient for cpap using home testing and/or has successfully billed for home testing, please leave a comment and share your experience.

A reader asked the following question:

I have some questions reguarding who will or who will be required to give a sleep study at home? Can a sleep technican hook up a patient at their home, by himself? Are can only a sleep technologist hook the patient up, in there home? This just seems like a slippery slope for sleep medicine. To me at the minimal a sleep technican, but what about Nurses or Respritory Therapist? Thank you for responding.

I don't think there are any standards for the hook up. The patient can hook himself up, or he could be hooked up by a technician, nurse, or secretary. I agree with your concerns.

I will be getting a type 3 home testing device in about 2 weeks. I'll let the readers of this blog know how things work out.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

What type III device did you get? How has it worked out?

Michael Rack, MD said...

It's the Grass Telefactror SleepTrek 3, though it hasn't arrived yet. Things are going slower than I thought.

Unknown said...

just saw the grass level 3 new device they have at sleep 2008, and it is much larger than I thought it would be. I am impressed with Braebon Medibyte, the new respironics PDX, and i like the ease of use of the ARES, but they have an 'interesting' set of technology....

Unknown said...

By the way, in case anyone cares. My likes and dislikes of the Grass.

Likes: built well; exceptional warranty; solid; color coded connections; software looks nice, but no personal experience;

dislikes: size, seems a bit pricey for the features and disposables (per test), It appeared even though it was color coded, some of the connections could be connected in the wrong place by a unattended patint; I dont care for rechargeable batteries with our model of testing, though for some, it could reduce per test costs... I prefer standard batteries that can be purchased at corner convenience stores...