DMEs

Change away, and write down your changes as you go, as sometimes you will make a change that works against you! It takes me s week to assess any change I make. It is your therapy, and DMEs are generally useless, and have often lied to me.

Almost all insurance companies follow the Medicare guidelines for supplies:
Item (number)         HCPCS        Freq
CPAP Mask             A7034           3 mon
CPAP Headgear     A7035           6 mon
Nasal pillows           A7033     2 per mon
Nasal cushions       A7032     2 per mon

SlimLineTubing       A7037           3 mon
Heated Tubing        A4604           3 mon
Disposable Filter     A7038      2 per mon
HumidferChamber  A7046           6 mon

Thanks for all you replies, no matter how helpful! If I can't bring my own CPAP to prison, then I am not going. It is encouraging Medicare replaces masks at 3 months. I will go through the torture of calling my insurance company and see what they say. One other nice thing about sleepy head software, it records the changes I made to the machine for easy reference. Have great Holidays.

One thing you might want to consider is that just because your insce co. will replace equipment that often, doesn't mean you have to take it. Picture a 1,000 landfills topped up with masks and hoses, etc. that won't ever biodegrade and that are still in absolutely good and useful condition... some of us keep masks (frames) for years, and hoses (decades!), and only change cushions (cleaned routinely) every six months or years! If something is working with no obvious signs of wear, does that mean we have to dispose of it because the insce. co. will pay to get more?

I really thought one back up would nice. Not planning to dispose of any!

Oh, backups are great!

I suggest to get the replacement parts as often as you can until you have at least two spares, or maybe a year's worth of spares. Then stop ordering that particular part. Rotate through the parts as you clean them, and then order new ones as the old ones wear out, or get so old you want to throw them away anyway.

Julie wrote:Oh, backups are great!

Whew, I thought I was on line to my DME somehow!

archangle wrote:I suggest to get the replacement parts as often as you can until you have at least two spares, or maybe a year's worth of spares. Then stop ordering that particular part. Rotate through the parts as you clean them, and then order new ones as the old ones wear out, or get so old you want to throw them away anyway.

I'll bet you have a closet full!

LSAT wrote:

archangle wrote:I suggest to get the replacement parts as often as you can until you have at least two spares, or maybe a year's worth of spares. Then stop ordering that particular part. Rotate through the parts as you clean them, and then order new ones as the old ones wear out, or get so old you want to throw them away anyway.

I'll bet you have a closet full!

Quite a bit, but I haven't gotten any supplies through insurance in nearly 10 years.

Both the owners manual and the providers manual came with my cpap; if they tell me I can't do that I will tell them they gave me the manual that tells how to do it. On another note, they have not noticed that I upped my lower pressure by 1cm.... or if they have, neither my sleep doc or the DME mentioned it to me. My PCP does know that I changed it, and he didn't have a problem with it. He even said that a small change shouldn't make any difference to them, after all, if my upper pressure is set at 18cm, then a step up at the lower end is not going to hurt. My nightly pressure usually runs in the neighborhood of 12-15.

Hubby made the mistake of doing a re-supply "subscription" where they just send you stuff every couple months. (This was back before his employer stopped the good insurance and put everyone on a minimum $5000 deductible plan.) Anyway, Hubby ended up with several boxes of supplies that he has not yet used, and it's been literally years since he's needed anything new.

Luckily for me, he switched to nasal pillows after accumulating a couple boxes of Mirage FX nasal mask frames and cushions which work terrific for me! So I'm going to be saving a few bucks in 2016.

Take that DMEs and shitty insurance carriers.