Sleep apnea patient abandonment? Anyone experienced it?

General Discussion on any topic relating to CPAP and/or Sleep Apnea.
MrGrumpy
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Sleep apnea patient abandonment? Anyone experienced it?

Post by MrGrumpy » Wed Feb 10, 2016 10:35 pm

Anyone experienced it here in the USA? Where sleep docs will see you for fifteen minutes, take your copay and bill your health insurance several hundred bucks for a ten to fifteen minute visit. Pop in, chit chat for ten minutes, act artificially concerned and pop out?

Ive experienced that.

Anybody else here experienced it? Its called "patient abandonment." Its actually a crime, but rarely prosecuted or even charged.
Id be dead by now if I didn't use my CPAP gear every night.

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Bill44133
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Re: Sleep apnea patient abandonment? Anyone experienced it?

Post by Bill44133 » Wed Feb 10, 2016 11:58 pm

Sorry to read that happened to you... I can't say it ever happened to me... and hope it never does..

Good Luck finding another doctor who cares.


I wish you well...

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hobbs
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Re: Sleep apnea patient abandonment? Anyone experienced it?

Post by hobbs » Thu Feb 11, 2016 12:00 am

" Its called "patient abandonment." Its actually a crime"

No; https://www.google.com/search?q=%22pati ... 8&oe=utf-8

MrGrumpy
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Re: Sleep apnea patient abandonment? Anyone experienced it?

Post by MrGrumpy » Thu Feb 11, 2016 12:42 am

It is a crime. Negligence is not a crime. Negligence by its nature is done unintentionally, by mistake or by negligence. I am talking about doctors who continue seeing patients, billing their health insurance and taking your copays, when they do nothing or very little to help you. When there are things that could be done if they tried. Ive experienced this

I believe the problem is a combination of things. First, health insurance in many cases is highly restrictive yet the doctor does not let the patient realize just how restrictive it is. But the doctors are oftentimes corrupted by the money part of medicine and just lead you on to bill your insurance.

The other part, is doctor entitlement attitudes. Frankly, many doctors believe BECAUSE they are doctors, somehow they are ENTITLED to do what they want and to bill your insurance, while doing very little work to try to solve your medical problems.

Negligence is an altogether different issue, that is mistake, not done knowingly or intentionally. The doctors know what they are doing in patient abandonment and I use that term loosely btw. Stringing you along could be another term to describe the phenomenon.

The minute a doctor takes you on as a patient, a formal contractual duty is created, as well as a formal fiduciary duty to look out for your health in whatever specialty they work in. Just like a lifeguard, when they are hired to watch the water for swimmers in distress...they are under a formal contractual duty. When lifeguards screw off and have their back turned to the water chatting with women and someone drowns or nearly drowns, the lifeguard can not just get sued for negligence, they can also be criminally prosecuted sometimes due to the formal contractual duty they have over the swimmers in their pool.

Its no different with doctors once they have established a formal contractual, doctor/patient relationship with you. Everybody knows about negligence, lawsuits and the like but few realize doctors can be prosecuted criminally for ignoring or shirking their duty to their patients, when the doctor is doing it knowingly.

hobbs wrote:" Its called "patient abandonment." Its actually a crime"

No; https://www.google.com/search?q=%22pati ... 8&oe=utf-8
Id be dead by now if I didn't use my CPAP gear every night.

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zoocrewphoto
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Re: Sleep apnea patient abandonment? Anyone experienced it?

Post by zoocrewphoto » Thu Feb 11, 2016 2:25 am

It's pretty common. Most of the doctors know how to diagnose sleep apnea, but they have no clue how to use a cpap machine, make it more comfortable, or even what to do with the data. So, they say it looks good and tell you to try harder. DME's simply don't care. They got their money, so it's your problem now.

That is why so many of us get full data auto machines. We can check our data, adjust our settings as needed, and get successful treatment. I went to my sleep doctor twice in 2012. Same with my DME. Fired them after they lied to me. I am getting great therapy without their help, and I am not wasting my money having somebody tell me that my therapy is fine.

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palerider
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Re: Sleep apnea patient abandonment? Anyone experienced it?

Post by palerider » Thu Feb 11, 2016 2:33 am

hobbs wrote:" Its called "patient abandonment." Its actually a crime"

No; https://www.google.com/search?q=%22pati ... 8&oe=utf-8
see, now you've gone and wasted a perfectly good google search.... trying to provide information to someone who can't read and comprehend, and just comes here to froth at the mouth like a rabid animal, just don't get bitten...

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Bigburd2008
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Re: Sleep apnea patient abandonment? Anyone experienced it?

Post by Bigburd2008 » Thu Feb 11, 2016 5:13 am

Mine was a lot worse. My doctor quit diagnosing and treating to go into teaching, gave me no references on other replacement doctors. Had two Sleep Studies, Before & After diagnosis, received Prescription for a CPAP in 2008. Monitored me for 1 year then he was gone. Been treating myself with support & education from Forums like this ever since. Feel Good, Sleeping Good, these Forums work.
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chunkyfrog
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Re: Sleep apnea patient abandonment? Anyone experienced it?

Post by chunkyfrog » Thu Feb 11, 2016 9:01 am

There are a lot of people on the forum BECAUSE it happened;
(or something similar) and "the system" has failed to address it.
Support groups exist for many disorders that are not yet recognized or poorly treated.
As long as we are an income source for the suppliers of our equipment,
I feel there is no reason we can't get our money's worth.
Getting money from a court of law is likely to be an exercise in frustration.

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MrGrumpy
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Re: Sleep apnea patient abandonment? Anyone experienced it?

Post by MrGrumpy » Thu Feb 11, 2016 11:10 am

This has been my experience in recent years. It was not my experience with my first DME or my first sleep doctor, but I got lucky there. Like the article i posted, a lot of doctors are crossing over from pulmonary and neurology and even psychiatry into sleep medicine to run sleep apnea diagnostic mills. Churning them out like crazy, getting your insurance money, referring you to a DME and probably getting kickbacks for referring to specific DMEs if they dont already have a formal contract with a DME.

I have had major major trouble getting competent help with my machines in recent years. Its like many of these "sleep docs" dont seem to know what they are doing. So, they get your money, give you a machine and sorta, kinda abandon you but they'd never admit it. Only a jury trial would ever be able to prove otherwise.

zoocrewphoto wrote:It's pretty common. Most of the doctors know how to diagnose sleep apnea, but they have no clue how to use a cpap machine, make it more comfortable, or even what to do with the data. So, they say it looks good and tell you to try harder. DME's simply don't care. They got their money, so it's your problem now.

That is why so many of us get full data auto machines. We can check our data, adjust our settings as needed, and get successful treatment. I went to my sleep doctor twice in 2012. Same with my DME. Fired them after they lied to me. I am getting great therapy without their help, and I am not wasting my money having somebody tell me that my therapy is fine.
Id be dead by now if I didn't use my CPAP gear every night.

MrGrumpy
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Re: Sleep apnea patient abandonment? Anyone experienced it?

Post by MrGrumpy » Thu Feb 11, 2016 11:11 am

Ive also observed its worse in the southern states, where things are less regulated than the rest of the USA.

Bigburd2008 wrote:Mine was a lot worse. My doctor quit diagnosing and treating to go into teaching, gave me no references on other replacement doctors. Had two Sleep Studies, Before & After diagnosis, received Prescription for a CPAP in 2008. Monitored me for 1 year then he was gone. Been treating myself with support & education from Forums like this ever since. Feel Good, Sleeping Good, these Forums work.
Id be dead by now if I didn't use my CPAP gear every night.

MrGrumpy
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Re: Sleep apnea patient abandonment? Anyone experienced it?

Post by MrGrumpy » Thu Feb 11, 2016 11:15 am

Im not interested in getting money out of these people. I want to see some of them behind bars. Thats an altogether different system of law, not civil law, not litigation. Its criminal law. Different animal. The bar for conviction is much higher, but DAs and the feds are starting to prosecute doctors for "abandoning patients" for getting them on prescription narcotic pain killers and then cutting them off...that does not work. They end up on heroin.

I'd like to see the criminal prosecution system start to hit some of these sleep apnea mills that have been popping up, along with some of the brick and mortar DMEs.

chunkyfrog wrote:There are a lot of people on the forum BECAUSE it happened;
(or something similar) and "the system" has failed to address it.
Support groups exist for many disorders that are not yet recognized or poorly treated.
As long as we are an income source for the suppliers of our equipment,
I feel there is no reason we can't get our money's worth.
Getting money from a court of law is likely to be an exercise in frustration.
Id be dead by now if I didn't use my CPAP gear every night.

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70sSanO
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Re: Sleep apnea patient abandonment? Anyone experienced it?

Post by 70sSanO » Thu Feb 11, 2016 12:17 pm

Bigburd2008 wrote:Mine was a lot worse. My doctor quit diagnosing and treating to go into teaching, gave me no references on other replacement doctors. Had two Sleep Studies, Before & After diagnosis, received Prescription for a CPAP in 2008. Monitored me for 1 year then he was gone. Been treating myself with support & education from Forums like this ever since. Feel Good, Sleeping Good, these Forums work.
Excellent response.

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Re: Sleep apnea patient abandonment? Anyone experienced it?

Post by Cardsfan » Thu Feb 11, 2016 1:16 pm

My PCP diagnosed me with an at home test. I got a prescription set to pressure cpap 5. His instructions to me were "you need a cpap machine, see you in 6 months". At the 6 month appt., he said "do you use your cpap?" I said yes. That was it. He never asked to see the data. At least he knew enough to diagnose me with apnea, thank goodness.

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Re: Sleep apnea patient abandonment? Anyone experienced it?

Post by Janknitz » Thu Feb 11, 2016 2:08 pm

I wouldn't call it "patient abandonment". It's lousy bedside manner and poor clinical practice IMHO. This doctor probably reviewed your history, reviewed your data from your sleep study, came to his or her conclusions, and in the short time with you confirmed his/her opinion. It's done all the time--doesn't make it right, but it's the state of medicine these days.

I think there are two types of sleep doctors:
1) Doctors who are fascinated by sleep and genuinely want to work with and help their patients.
2) Doctors who really want as little contact with patients as possible, and sleep medicine is their cash cow. They pay other people (sleep lab techs, front office staff) to interact with you, they invest in a lot of equipment and facilities to generate income, and avoid patient contact as much as possible.

You got the latter. It's not uncommon at all. I have never even met "my" sleep specialist. He works for my HMO, reads the test results and the notes of the sleep tech and rubber stamps their recommendations. Great gig if you can get it and you like that sort of thing. If I'd insisted I could have had a face to face consultation with him, but his reputation preceded him and I knew it wasn't worth the waste of my time. I needed the diagnosis and the script, but after that I'm in charge of my own health management, didn't really need him beyond that.

If you feel abandoned by your sleep doctor, vote with your feet and find a more touchy feely one that fits category 1 rather than category 2.
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Stormynights
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Re: Sleep apnea patient abandonment? Anyone experienced it?

Post by Stormynights » Thu Feb 11, 2016 2:14 pm

I saw one sleep doctor and I was excited because she used a cpap machine. She said she would never prescribe anything but a cpap machine with a fixed pressure because that was what she used and didn't see any reason why anyone would need anything else. My PCP now takes care of anything I need. He is pretty clueless but he listens to me. I can learn what I need to know here and then go tell my doctor.

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