Newbie/ Question for friend w/ no insurance

Hi all! I am new to the group and wish I would have come across this a year ago when I started treatment for apnea. I am loving my RemStar Auto C-PAP and have had no problems since beginning treatment in fact, I have lost 65 pounds and am loving life again.

Now, on to my question, I have a friend that went to his primary doc the other day with problems of confusion/too much sleep/not enough sleep/mood swings/etc....you get the picture. Just to give a little history, he has been going to doctors for years and all they tell him is that he has anxiety problems and ADD and let's try another drug on you. Now, after all this time, I told him to go and see my primary doctor (who did NOT diagnose my apnea) for a full blood workup and low and behold, this doctor finally hit on something that I should have seen or thought of with the symptoms. He wants him to go in for a sleep study but here comes the problem....he has not been able to work with all these problems and lost his insurance through the union so he is paying for all of this out of pocket. I called and made an appt for him at the sleep doc and they told me that the sleep study would cost $10,000! OK, I know that everyone does not have insurance and can get treated so does anyone have any insight into how to get this test done at a reduced cost or through a "case study"? We live in St. Louis. At this point, he feels like he finally has a door that could open but it is locked and he can't get in. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

Your friend may want to try to run the "RG End Around".

Get a doctor to write your friend an Rx for an AUTO CPAP. Buy a Remstar Auto with C-Flex and Encore Pro software for your friend. That'll cost $1000 bucks and will effectively be 1. a sleep study 2. treatment if your friend does indeed have sleep apnea.

That price is WAY too high. Most sleep studies run in the 2000 - 3000 dollar range, and that's the price they charge the insurance company. The insurance company usually only pays between 1000 and 1500 dollars. Personally, I agree with the guest who said get the prescription, and then get an auto machine and equipment on line, like from cpap.com. But if your friend really wants the study he can apply for a lower cost study through this program. He will have to provide income information, and they will determine on need. There is also lower cost or free equipment through this site.
http://www.awakeinamerica.org/DonateRelief/

Debbie

From a budgetary standpoint, I wholeheartedly agree.

Obviously the BEST thing to do would be to have the proper sleep study and know for certain what's going on... but that's pretty expensive without insurance.

I'd have to say you're probably better off using an Auto to perform a sort of semi-sleep study (if you can convince his PCP to prescribe the machine) than not to get treated at all. Not as good, perhaps, as the full study, but certainly better than going untreated, if apnea really does exist.

(And although I know some will say that a full sleep study SHOULD be done, I have definitely heard of doctors who skip the sleep study entirely and just go with an Auto to titrate a pressure. We had someone on here recently who was annoyed because the doctor took the Auto back and gave them a cheaper machine, once the Auto had titrated a pressure for them.)

So I'd talk to a sympathetic doctor, perhaps look up some of the links that Meister is so famous for to boost the argument that an Auto can be a reasonable low-cost substitute for a titration study, and see if you can go right to "Hey, cpap.com, here's my prescription and $900. Send me the best of everything!".

Liam, who isn't sure he wouldn't have been better off if he'd gone that route.

mamalou, your friend has a good friend indeed... in you!

A post about why I skipped having a sleep study and just got a machine is in this clickable link:

Jan 25, 2005 Subject: not diagnosed yet, many ? brand new here

To help arm your friend with a sleep doctor's opinion of going that kind of route, here's a link posted by Mikesus in March, 2005:

Powerpoint presentation at a meeting of the American Lung Association of the Central Coast - November 2004 (Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader to view.)

That link gives excellent reasons presented by a sleep doctor who advocates that some patients who have obvious signs of OSA should be put directly on autopaps (auto-titrating cpap) without having to go through a PSG sleep study.

That smart sleep doctor is:
Barbara Phillips, MD, MSPH, FCCP
Professor, Division of Pulmonary Critical Care and Sleep Medicine
Director of the Samaritan Sleep Center
Department of Internal Medicine
University of KY College of Medicine
Lexington, KY

I just wanted to thank you all for your advise and I promise to take it all back to him. It is so difficult seeing someone struggle through the same things that I did and now to hit a brick wall because of this ridiculous monetary amount. Thank you all again!

Lisa

go to yahoo auctions.

can buy one now for 275.00

auto pap virtuoso by respironics.

tomjax wrote:go to yahoo auctions.

can buy one now for 275.00

auto pap virtuoso by respironics.

I'm pretty sure that's an older model with an older algorithm...

Y'know, the older algorithms that most sleep doctors are talking about when they try to tell us that Auto isn't worth buying...

I suppose it's better than nothing, but I'm not sure I'd spend even that much on outdated equipment.

My two cents.

Liam, who's really gonna go broke, dolling out these two cent items as freely as he does.

Actually my health care provider does not do the sleep studies most on this board seem to go through. After being referred to the sleep experts by my primary doctor, they set up a meeting with a sleep technician and gave me a small piece of electronics that attached to my chest, connected to a band that went around my chest, and another around my stomach. It had a nasal attachment that measured my nasal breathing, and a finger clip that measured blood oxygenation. The machine was incredible, it measured all my snoring, apneas, hypopneas, sleep position (left side, right side, back) and more. The good thing about this is it's low cost, and you are being tested sleeping in your own environment.

Anyway I got this report showing all these plots and graphs as to what happened in what sleep position. How long I stopped breathing and what my blood oxygenation dropped to (79%) during events. From this they were able to diagnose me as having severe sleep apnea with an AHI of 45.

Maybe your friend can find a health care provider that uses a similar method. My insurance covered the tests but not the equpment, but even so I imagine this method would cost less than a full blown study with technicians watching you under a magnifying glass.

Yopu Had the home sleep study that the sleep centers effectively had medicare say was no good. Wonder Why? Follow the Money $$$$$$$$$$$$

Cheers,

Chris

Yeah, funny how that works, I guess we humans subconsciously rationalize the data as to not obsolete our own existence.

Interestingly, the data from my "ineffective" home sleep study resulted in a prescription from my sleep doc of 10cm h2o. I checked the pressure my resmed autoset had settled into this morning when I woke and it mysteriously had settled in at 9.5 cm h2o. Perhaps my doc and Respironics are conspiring together against the sleep centers...

... bwah hahaha I'm not paranoid, everyone really is out to get me...