Want a good laugh?

[Wulfman]

I just KNOW you could use a good laugh today!!!

Well, I've never seen a copy of my sleep study.....and for all these months I've wondered how in the H*ll my sleep doc and the other idiot who read the study could have come up with a pressure of 18 cm.

SOOOO......early last week, I took my wife to the clinic for a blood draw and while I was there, I asked one of the people at the desk if I get a copy of my sleep study from March of 2005. She had me fill out this form for release of my records and said they would mail them to me.....
OooooK......

Today, in the mail, I received a large manilla envelope, which I opened with anticipation.......

GUESS WHAT WAS IN THERE........!?!?!?

Copies of the Encore Pro reports and MyEncore reports that I had given THEM last August (that had the all-inclusive dates from the beginning of my therapy to that point).


AAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!!! (I screamed)

I'm beginning to wonder just what they faxed to my insurance provider...... Maybe I'd have more luck getting the copies from THEM.

Some people.......

Den

[neversleeps]

LOL!!!!!!!!!

Good work, Doctor Den!!! I hope you got paid the physician's salary for that report. I hear those things are very expensive.

The only thing that could have made it funnier is if they charged you postage for sending it to you!!

[mattman]

They can look very similar so I'm not terribly supprised.

Heck, I went to go pull my sleep study the other day to make a copy of it, grabbed it out of my file at home and went in to work.
Went to make the copy and realized I'd actually grabbed a copy of my last oximetery. D'oh!

It happens to the best of us. Sadly, we are all still human.

mattman

[Bonnie]

Good one, Den........and people wonder why we sometimes conplain about the medical profession

And Happy New Year to you!

[penelopepanda]

18 cm!?! I am so sorry for you! I can barely stand 9cm!

[rested gal]

18 cm!?! I am so sorry for you! I can barely stand 9cm!

I'd feel sorry for him too, Penelope, but fortunately the wily wolf took matters in his own resourceful paws. He got himself an autopap and software to see what pressure(s) he really needed, night after night.

As his signature shows, he found:
Pressure Setting=10, 11 or 12 cm

gives him great results:
User since 05/14/05....AHI average 0.8

He now uses straight cpap (an autopap can be used as straight cpap, very versatile! ) at a more reasonable pressure than that hurricane of 18. Hooray, Den!

You know, the ones I feel sorry for are the majority out there who are prescribed cpap and never find their way to this message board. Of course, most people are not the least bit interested in the nuts and bolts of their treatment. But some are.

Den, that was funny about your own Encore/MyEncore reports being sent back to you as the "sleep study" results!

[DreamStalker]

18 cm!?! I am so sorry for you! I can barely stand 9cm!

I'd feel sorry for him too, Penelope, but fortunately the wily wolf took matters in his own resourceful paws. He got himself an autopap and software to see what pressure(s) he really needed, night after night.

As his signature shows, he found:
Pressure Setting=10, 11 or 12 cm

gives him great results:
User since 05/14/05....AHI average 0.8

He now uses straight cpap (an autopap can be used as straight cpap, very versatile! ) at a more reasonable pressure than that hurricane of 18. Hooray, Den!

You know, the ones I feel sorry for are the majority out there who are prescribed cpap and never find their way to this message board. Of course, most people are not the least bit interested in the nuts and bolts of their treatment. But some are.

Den, that was funny about your own Encore/MyEncore reports being sent back to you as the "sleep study" results!

Try telling that to mattman and I'm sure he would say ... but sleep docs and DME clinicians know best -- OSA patients should just take their medicine and forget about APAPs unless they have a real need. Problem with that is that a patient does not know if he/she needs one unless they try an APAP out first (with the help of this forum of course).

This forum and the knowledgable members are truely life savers!

[dsm]

Den,

It is well worth pursuing the report

As mentioned in past posts, my sleep study lab had filled in a sheet I was to take to the Remstar Agent & it had my titration CMS setting on it as 15. I actually phoned the clinic to reconfirm the figure & had that number reconfirmed as I had to get my doctor to write a presecription to send to cpap.com when I bought my Remstar Auto from them.

18 months later I went back to see my respiratory specialist & his first act was to read out the summary of the finding from the sleep study only he said the titration was 13 !. The report was perfectly clear on it. The clinic goofed. My own long term experimenting led me to drop the setting to 13.

So yes go and push them for the original report - you never know if a 3 becomes an 8 or a 5 or whatever

Happy New Year to you all over there (we have had ours here)

DSM

[lvwildcat]

Hey mattman- lucky for you that you can pull your record. I'm an RN who works for HCA. My results were sitting on Meditech right in front of me, It is a BIG NO-NO for employees to access their own records. My neurologist happened to hear me complaining about this;logged me out;logged himself in and printed up my results. I know not everyone has the same luxury. But isn't it amazing what we have to go through?

[mattman]

Try telling that to mattman and I'm sure he would say ... but sleep docs and DME clinicians know best -- OSA patients should just take their medicine and forget about APAPs unless they have a real need.

Way to put words in my mouth, make wild assumptions, throw out something totally different from anything I've ever said and basically just go off the deep end there sparky.

Tell you what, next time you want to insult me feel free to go ahead and PM me and keep this kind of garbage off the regular boards.

Merry New Year to you too Sunshine.

mattman

[mattman]

Hey mattman- lucky for you that you can pull your record.

Ha! I wish. I'm not allowed to pull my own records either. I was just talking about the stuff I keep a copy of here at home.

Can you belive it's a freaking HIPAA violation to pull your own damn medical records?

Thank you Bill Clinton for making it a violation of Federal Law to see your own stupid health records.

mattman

[birdshell]

But then, there are the docs who open the file/chart while sitting right next to the patient. It is pretty hard NOT to read the information in that position, but then said doctor of mine will turn the file to show things to which he is referring.

He also is VERY willing to give copies of almost anything from the patient's file to the patient. This is usually involving only a page or two at a time, and is often a blood test report or something of the like. Hopefully, that does not violate HIPAA.

It would be very interesting to know the cost, exactly, of the storage of all of those HIPAA forms in hard copy for each patient at each medical office. As I seem to recall, even the DME providers and pharmacies need to store these things.

[Alisha]

Quote: Try telling that to mattman and I'm sure he would say ... but sleep docs and DME clinicians know best -- OSA patients should just take their medicine and forget about APAPs unless they have a real need. Problem with that is that a patient does not know if he/she needs one unless they try an APAP out first (with the help of this forum of course).

This forum and the knowledgable members are truely life savers!"


Thanks, Dreamstalker, for saying the above. It's sometimes difficult for me not to say something when the DME's try to defend the DME's and docs. I'm sure there are a few DME's somewhere who actually try to help their customers/patients, but I don't know where they are.

I am reminded of a lady I met a few months. In the conversation, she told me she had sleep apnea. When she learned that I, too, have OSA, she told me her story. Three years ago she had been sent for a sleep study, diagnosed, sold a cpap and mask, then left on her own.

A year later she received a card in the mail from the sleep doc telling her to make an appointment, which she did. When she saw the doc, he looked at her, then looked at a picture his office had made the year before, and said, "You look better. I'll see you next year." THIS IS A TRUE STORY!

Well, she didn't schedule an appointment the next year, nor has she ever heard from the DME, not even to ask if she needed a new mask.

She further told me that she was having the same symptoms as pre-cpap. I told her if it were me, after learning so much from cpaptalk.com, that I would find a new sleep doc, tell him what equipment she is using and how she is feeling, then pray (a lot) that she'll get the help she needs.

I didn't give her my doc's name because he hasn't done much for me. My best friend sees a different sleep doc, but she doesn't recommend him either. I did recommend cpaptalk.com, but she said she has never used a computer. I told her if she wanted to buy one, I'd teach her how to use it.

That's just one story reflecting the helpful, caring, compassionate doctors and DME's we deal with.

Regards and Happy New Year to all from Alisha,

[Wulfman]

Maybe I should have been more "technical" when I asked for my "sleep study"......I SHOULD have asked for the "PSG and titration reports".....but I DID specify the date of the split-night study in March of '05. I won't make that mistake again. And, somehow, I intend to get my hands on it.

What "sticks in my craw" about that experience with the doctors is that two of those jokers charged my insurance a total of about $1000 (or more) to come up with a diagnosis and titration. What made me very suspicious that my sleep doctor didn't know what he was doing is that he asked ME what the pressure of the machine was that night......HUH? I told him I thought the sleep lab tech had said something about 16.....so he wrote the prescription for 18.......WHAT??

I started out with the Pro 2 at that pressure for about an hour. And, after trying to cope with that much pressure, I decided to do what the sleep doctor did and "GUESS" at a better pressure that I could sleep with and that would be more comfortable to start out this therapy. After giving it some thought, I came up with a setting of 10. After collecting data for 4 days, I downloaded it into the Encore Pro and VOILA......I was seeing AHIs below 3.0.....some below 1.0. So, I kept it at that setting for the next 10 months. After I got past the first couple of "break-in" months, I started having monthly averages of 0.6, 0.7 and 0.8 pretty consistently. It wasn't until March of this year that I started playing around with some higher pressures (due to seeing a few more consistent apneas) and then experimenting with an Auto. Ultimately, the Auto told me I had the pressure about right to begin with.
The software was definitely worth the investment!

Gee......I sure wish I had that $1000 back.

Thanks for your feedback......I hope it gave you a chuckle.

Happy New Year, folks.

Den

[sthnreb]

I never got a copy of titration from the sleep lab at the hospital. Maybe I should have. My doctor from the titration prescribed a bipap setting of 12/8. I've been using the bipap auto since November of 2006 everynight and even though it goes up and down, the average is still 12/8. So, I can only assume my titration was correct. By the way, my AHI is normally from 2 down and often well below 1. Happy New Year