Sleep Apnea Confusion...

They were stopped by congress passing a law.

 

It is ######## brought by your company. A Docyor can not issue on his own. GET A LAWYER!

 

Get a lawyer for what?

A carrier can create policies to employ people, there is no right to employment.

 

A sleep lab would be a place I will never be able to sleep. Seriously LOL.

 

I did not sleep good at the sleep lab. Think I was up half the night. They hook all the wire up to you and you see the camera looking down on your bed. Ha ha it seem they don't need 5 or 8 hours of sleep to see if someone had sleep apnea. With all the computers. They can see a person stopped breathing in 15 minutes. I should say they could see me stopped breathing because I had it so bad. I did not know untill I had sleep test they can see every single breath you take and see when your in REM sleep or just wake with you eyes closed.

 

They are interfering with your medical qualification when by law the FMCSA can not mandate sleep apnea standards.

Yeah they can tell you to work for them you must comply with their policy. However they have just stopped him from seeking other employment

 

OK got it.

I really don't have an answer for you but ...

Here are a few things to think about.

first if the Carrier has the sleep study "sponsored" by a lab, they can request those records from the lab. The lab may say no but the truth is they have the agreement with the carrier, not you. There is NO HIPAA protections because US DOT regulated employees are exempt from them.

Second In order for you to get a medical device, you have to get a script from a doc. If it is the doc who interpret your results, then you need to present this to the examiner. It is an assumption that the doc who wrote you a script is your treating doc, not your regular doc. This goes back to your question - "Is it up to the Dr that I got my med card from to decide if my minor OSA needs CPAP treatment, or does the Dr my company apparently gave my test results to get to decide now that I need CPAP?"

It is the doc who is treating you, the doc/examiner can not make a determination of what you need to be treated for or not for. The company again is the one who sets the standards for employment, the FMCSA/US DOT regulations, guidelines and such are the minimal requirements.

Third the carrier can refuse to accept the physical as accurate - they can legally, citing the fact you went for a sleep study and was given a script for the machine in their justification of the rejection - then you have to have the examiner to add that into the physical and justify his/her decision not to have you use the machine with the documentation from the doctor who made the determination with your test results.

AND I have to add this - I went through hell every ********* year when I had my cdl either over this issue or my diabetes, mostly my sleep apnea which I do have and to me it saved my life. My treating doc was on the advisory board for the FMCSA for four years and she is really pissed at how this all came about and what they screwed up. She said it has been a mess for most of the drivers she has been treating and getting bad by these back door methods. Personally with all the BS I gone through since 2003, I think that if we are going to have DOT physicals on the level of commercial airline pilots, then we need to be treated better and with more respect. BUT as I ramble about this, I don't think we need to be treated as if we are pilots.

No they are not.

They are not preventing anything when they apply their policies to physicals that they require.

 

I did not know you had those battles Ridgeline.

You should listen to some of the one way converstations I had to have against hard headed DOT doctors regarding my hearing. Glasses easy peasy, look here. Hearing aids? ZOMG etc. and they lose it. It got to where my state audioloigst could whistle at me and draw the chart from memory. Which was very close to actual formal charts.

 

As long as you have valid medical card nobody cares about sleep apnea. It's the doctor signing his or her name. Is responsible. So if you have a doctor that doesn't care or ask about it then nobody knows.

The prescription is the pressure setting on the cpap machine. Sounds like they gave you autoset CPAP. That were the CPAP machine will adjust the pressure on each breath. They also make CPAP they can only work on the pressure they are set for. A home study sleep test they have no way of knowing what your pressure/prescription should be. So they get people an autoset CPAP machine. The CPAP can adjust the pressure as you sleep

In a sleep lab they hook you up to a cpap machine and they can adjust the pressure as a person is sleeping and see how they sleep. Then they can give a actually pressure prescription like 15 or 7.

You can buy supplies like a mask or hose without a prescription from different places not a Medical supply place. Amazon sell stuff, Thecpapstore.com sell stuff