Dreamstation Auto: Therapy hours vs Blower hours vs Compliance hours

[cpapnoobz]

Hello. the device I'm thinking about buying is a Dreamstation auto that's being advertised as brand new and never used.

It has 0 hours for therapy and blower hours. However, it has 65000 next to Compliance. Does this mean it has over 65000 compliance hours? What exactly is this compliance number?

Does this mean that it was actually used and somehow the previous owner found out how to reset the therapy and blower hours to 0 to try to sell it as brand new? Please help. I do not want to be scammed.

Thank you!

[Pugsy]

Welcome to the forum.

The compliance number isn't hours...it's just a code for whatever number of days the user has met the minimum number of hours of use to be "compliant" which is at least 4 hours per day.
So it's a code number and the DMEs probably have a decoding sheet to see what 65000 actually means.
Why they have to have secret codes is beyond my understanding.

I suspect with the blower hours and therapy hours showing 0.....it probably means 0.

The only place where the machine hours can be rest to 0 is at the Respironics factory.

[cpapnoobz]

Thanks so much! So I guess it is the real deal. It is very odd though because next to compliance. There's a very random number. Like 65291.

[raysgirl]

Why would the blower be on significantly more than compliance??

[robysue1]

Why would the blower be on significantly more than compliance??

Machine hours is equal to the total time the blower unit has been run since it left the factory.

Blower hours is the total number of hours the blower unit has been run since the last time the machine data was cleared (most typically so a new patient can use it.)

Compliance hours would be related to the number of hours the machine has been run and breathing has been detected since the last time the data was reset. Most insurance companies and Medicare and Medicaid require a person to use the machine for at least 4 hours per night for something like 70% of the nights in the first three months. Otherwise, they won't pay their share of the cost of the machine.

[Conrad]

This is interesting. I had two PR machines that were recalled. A DS auto and a PR 1 auto. The DS auto was in use for only two years, but the PR One was in use for ~8 years.

Early on in the recall process I received a DS auto from my DME that appeared to be brand new. Still smelled new and still had the peel off plastic covering the display. All the counters were at zero. This machine has become my backup since I purchased a Resmed AirCurve 10 out of pocket.

Then last week my DME informed me that they finally had a replacement for my PR 1, another DS auto. I brought my old PR in and swapped them out. This DS auto didn't look new, not like the first one. It has a sticker on the bottom stating something about being remanufactured or some such. The first replacement DS didn't have this sticker. After powering up this second machine and checking the hours, blower hours were showing zero, but the machine hours showed 7,300 hours.

What's up with that? Did that 7,300 hours not get reset or what? And what of the first DS being all zeros?

[Pugsy]

It has a sticker on the bottom stating something about being remanufactured or some such. The first replacement DS didn't have this sticker. After powering up this second machine and checking the hours, blower hours were showing zero, but the machine hours showed 7,300 hours.

What's up with that? Did that 7,300 hours not get reset or what? And what of the first DS being all zeros?

Sounds like with your first replacement machine you received a brand spanking new machine.
Sounds like with your second replacement machine you got an older machine (most likely someone else's returned machine) that they "re-manufactured" or what I think of as "refurbished" but the refurbishing didn't include doing whatever is necessary to the motor to qualify for a hours reset which is what the machine hours counts. It's the foam that is the supposed problem...not the motor.
Most likely nothing at all was done to the machine in terms of the motor so there was no reason to reset the motor hours.
If it was tested it most likely was performing as expected so no need to replace the motor and/or reset the hours.

[Conrad]

Thanks Pugsy.

This is what I suspected but I wanted to see what others thought.

My son also uses a CPAP, I'll give him the second machine as his back-up and I'll keep the first as mine.