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In-lab sleep testing requires extensive resources: onsite staff, medical equipment, and a full bedroom set. Not only is this an additional expense for insurance payers, but the unfamiliar sleep setting can affect the patient’s normal sleep patterns and skew the test results. Expanding the labs to home sleep testing solves many of these problems.

Familiar Environment:

While some extreme conditions still require in-lab sleep testing, many patient populations are well suited for home sleep diagnostic testing. These groups include those tested for occupational reasons, patients with a high probability of sleep apnea, the home bound and those suffering from chronic pain. The unfamiliar in-lab environment can lead to increased anxiety for the patient and inconvenience to those caring for them. For patients with chronic pain who experience difficulty in traveling to a sleep lab. It also is more convenient for the patient’s caregiver who would normally be needed to accompany them during the overnight study. As the desire for home testing continues to grow, new technology will continue to improve diagnostic devices that will increase the reliability of home testing and will expand the number of patients that can be successfully tested in the home. Furthermore, moving a patient who requires a paid medical assistant can be expensive for the patient and/or the insurance payer.

Affordability:

The changing reimbursement and acceptance of home sleep testing by insurance payers and sleep professionals will open up opportunities for improved patient care and will provide sleep labs with a means to expand the reach of their sleep services.

Traditional Sleep Labs Can Expand:

In addition to these benefits for the patients, traditional sleep labs will also benefit from expanding their sleep services to include home testing. Typically overcrowded labs will only have deal with those who require in-lab testing, and they can service a larger total volume of patients since they do not all need to be onsite. Each patient population can then receive a faster diagnosis and therefore faster treatment initiation, without the need for additional beds for the sleep lab. The traditional sleep labs, by incorporating home sleep testing, dramatically improve the care for their patients and the ease of diagnosis for their staff.

Overall, home sleep testing will greatly improve the patient care, and new technologies will continue to improve the quality of at-home care.

This post draws on the experience of several experts at CleveMed and is an adaptation from “Home Sleep Testing Can Improve Patient Care,” by Sarah Weimer, as seen in Sleep Diagnosis and Therapy, January-February 2008

Tags: home sleep testing, reimbursement, sleep disordered breathing, sleep lab, wireless PSG

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 14th, 2009 at 1:00 am and is filed under Sleep Disorders. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.