Consider the analogy of using Ambien at a different dosage than the prescription that your doctor advised. Is it illegal to use outside their prescription, yes. Not really. Surprisingly enough, you're under no legal obligation to follow a prescription (except for certain situations involving active...

When it comes to FDA, keep in mind that they really don't get involved in how people USE things. They don't care if I prescribe off-label. They don't care if you sell your OxyContin to your neighbor (The DEA sure as heck does, but not the FDA). They don't care who, if anyone, messes with your CPAP p...

I really, really promise that it's not illegal for a patient to change his own machine settings. It probably *does* violate a regulation or at least a practice guideline for a tech to change settings without a prescription or order to do so. I seriously doubt there's a law on the books anywhere that...

We have patients with their own CPAP gear in our small rural hospital all the time. Nobody gets freaked out by it. Staff usually ask someone to give them a tutorial, given all the many variations on machines, humidifiers, and masks. There is no federal regulation prohibiting nurses or RT's from fill...

mstevens, you don't understand HIPAA correctly. I do. There is no right, under HIPAA, any state law of which I'm aware, or case law, to immediate access to medical records on-demand. Even if there were such a right, there is no mechanism at all to grant this. Providing care is always going to trump...

There is one sleep lab near here that, when I called to try to get more information about a patient's study, told me they sent me everything they had, which did not answer my question. Any lab (and associated sleep doc) that cannot provide a family doctor detailed info from a study within a reasona...

walk into the lab, say you have come to view all your medical records, and tell them that you will cancel your upcoming sleep study unless they show you the records then and there. Nobody has a right to view their records in person on a walk-in basis. A lab might well be wise to go ahead and cancel...

But what about for a patient with OSA that is not responding to treatment. If you keep OSA in the question, the answer is still that there are no blood tests that are likely to be helpful. However, it sounds as if you're talking not about anything actually directly related to OSA or CPAP but rather...

I've never had a doctor require a written release of any kind to send any prescriptions to a pharmacy or DME, online or bricks and mortar. Prescriptions are unclear - officially, any release of medical information requires a release under HIPAA unless information is going to someone with whom one h...

Good points, robysue! But I'm still wondering what tests people would suggest to rule out other issues. I guess my wording was wrong, but still the same idea. My GP is one to really just say..give your cpap more time. And I'm at the point I want to KNOW more, not just wait more. So I'm trying to be...

When I travel, I just buy cheap bottled drinking water to use in my humidifier. At home, I use tap. In my case, I know the mineral content of my water (very low) and how many bacterial and fungal contaminants it contains (practically none). By the time it gets through my house's water-treatment syst...

Count me as another water-liker, so my advice may not help much. "Flavored" water is flavored with chemicals that give you no benefit. They may not be a problem, but in terms of risk/benefit ratio they still don't look good due to the lack of benefit. The age-old way to flavor water is by turning it...

I feel highly-qualified to comment because I'm a doctor on CPAP and treat a couple of doctors on CPAP. As noted above, doctors are often horrible patients. They know everything about everything and can be better about giving advice than accepting it. On the other hand, doctors are trained to listen ...

Real men do need instructions.

They typically neither seek nor follow them, though.

It depends on many factors, including ambient humidity and temperature. At 3.5 (before I hooked up the Climateline tubing), my H5i went through an entire tub in 8.5 hours in my very dry, pretty cold bedroom in New Hampshire. I now use the full Climateline setup at 80F, which seems to provide roughly...