Sleep apnea and med card drama ...

Per my CME in MD, your state may vary.

Get sleep study, if pass cool, continue with your life. If you fail, obtain CPAP. They will offer a 90 day card until you can supply 30 days of usage with the CPAP. If data is good (it's helping) they will extend card for the rest of year.

Now as far as I know they will not require a study every year. Once you're on the CPAP you just continue to use it and have to supply them data when you go in to renew. CPAP has a mem card you can take to CME with you.

Again, this is my local CME here in Maryland, info directly from them. Your local CME may be slightly different as they all seem to have at least some personal discretion when it comes to apnea.

As for how long it can take well that will vary as well. If he/she has good insurance or is paying cash this can be done pretty quickly. Even over the Christmas holiday it only took me 3 days to get first study done, then waited through Christmas til New Year and got second done (I failed first study). Longest delay so far has been almost a month to actually get the machine, but that's because I had to rely on Medicaid.


Ed

 

The sleep test is usually 2 test first to see if someone has sleep apnea. Then the second sleep night would be the find the pressure settings for that person or the prescription. The time it take all depends on sleep place and insurance. If insurance is paying the bill tell the driver to make sure the DME the place that give you a CPAP. Make sure he get a good one. Like ResMed Aircurve 10 or Resperonics. One with removable SD card that DATA capable. That way he can read is own data if he wants. The new ResMed cpaps also have built-in modems for wireless sleep data reporting. That a nice thing to have because when you renew you medical card and the doctor want to see you sleep data. You can have the DME fax your sleep data to your D.O. T physical doctor.

 

Before I answer anything, I have to ask - you have a driver?

Please explain.

 

The testing is only one time then as long as the CPAP machine keep a person sleep apnea Events to 4-1 or less per hour, that back in normal range and everything is good. They count sleep apnea Events as 10 seconds or more of not breathing. So 1-4 events or 10-40 seconds per hour is normal for every one basically. 5-15 is Mild 15-30 is Moderate and 30+ Events per hour is Severe sleep apnea. That's how you know if the CPAP machine is working. It gets your AHI/Events Per Hour back down to 1-4 in the normal range. Then you also know you don't need another sleep test. If you can read your own Data because you got a Data capable machine you can check it yourself. ResMed had a little display screen and show you that number every morning and uploads the same info a web site you can log into and see the data also.

Their is also program called Sleepyhead you can run on your own computer and you take the Data from your CPAP machine (if it's data capable) you can see yourself breathing every second if you have trouble with getting you numbers back down to 1-4 normal range. Your not stuck waiting to go see the sleep doctor. You can just adjust the machine yourself if you wanted to.

 

Since it sounds like you are the company... Go to a D.O.T. doctor that does not force a sleep study. It is currently not required, so don't force it on your driver(s)

 

That's what we did...

 

this whole sleep apnea/sleep study thing is bullcrap for obtaining a DOT medical card. it's not required. Show them the regs and says "show me where it is required to issue a card?"

it's a scam and more people need to push back.

 

http://www.npexcellence.com/images/PDFs/FMCSAMedicalExaminerHandbook-2014MAR18.pdf

FMCSA has not published the new one yet, so this is still in affect.

pg 117....