ozij wrote: ↑Sun Nov 20, 2022 8:15 pm
Aren't the DME's supposed to
stick strictly to the doctor's script?
Wouldn't changing a person's settings on their machine be as bad as a pharmacist giving you a wrong strength for your meds?
(Real question, because I have experience in how things work in the US).
I'm not really worried about the DME changing the
doctor's prescription that they have on record.
I'm worried that if I do my own tweaking of those settings (as most of us here have done) and the DME notices that the settings on the machine no longer agree with the doc's script, that they'll just change the settings back.
Sleep doc #4 (who is now retired) was cool with me changing my own settings if/when I wanted to experiment with them. He told me that I knew more about xPAP than most doctors and that it was clear I knew what I was doing. The settings that I told sleep doc #5 that I was using on the DreamStation were never written down as a formal script from sleep doc #4---they were what I'd settled on from prudent and cautious dial winging through the years, and the last titration study done at sleep doc #4's request (as part of the Second War on Insomnia), recommended bipap pressures of 6/4, which both sleep doc #4 and I knew was a significant under-titration caused by a combo of a "good night" for the OSA and a "bad night" for the insomnia. In other words, there wasn't much sleep to work with, and in what sleep I did get that night, the OSA was not at its worst.
But here's the conundrum: My DreamStation's settings: Min EPAP = 4, Max IPAP = 9, Min PS = 3, Max PS = 5 cannot be duplicated on an AirCurve 10 Vauto because Resmed uses a fixed PS. So if the script is written with my DreamStation's settings, what happens when the DME has to pick a specific PS to set up the machine's therapeutic settings?
Presumably they call the doc's office. Presumably the doc picks a number out of a hat that contains the numbers 3, 4, and 5. But unless the doc picks "4", I'll be changing that setting as soon as I get the machine home.
So
if the DME chooses to monitor my compliance with cellular modem and
if they notice that PS has been changed to 4, are they going to arbitrarily change it back to whatever number the doc picked out of the hat?
Now I grant pugsy's point: DMEs in the states seem to be far more worried about documenting you are using the machine for 4 hours every night so they get paid than they are about whether therapy is actually working. And compliance not going to be an issue. But my question is still relevant---what if the DME does actually pay attention to more than just usage? If they see I've changed the settings without their involvement, are they going to just change them back using the cellular modem to communicate the therapy changes to my machine without bothering to tel me?
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