[ACEsthetics] Medicare nails CPAPs

Don't know if this hit everyone but got a message from sleep society that Medicare is cutting CPAP reimbursement by 47% for full mask devices.  Nothing was said about MADs.  I worked on the nurse practitioner for the local big shot sleep guy who got me to take Kent's course (thank goodness) and asked her if they were doing any ambulatory sleep studies.  I'd heard that Medicare and the Blues were going to move almost totally to ambulatory over the centers.  She angrily told me that the Blues had just about made them go totally to ambulatory sleep studies because they were essentially as accurate as those being done in docs' offices or centers rather than hospitals.  She said she hated the ambulatory sleep studies because patients did not know how to use them.  We've had not one problem other than one clerical error and a temp loss of one test.  They just hate the lower reimbursement.  

I'm sure all of this is due to abuse of sleep studies and CPAP sales by Home Health Companies.  Kent that 47% I know you've seen but I did not know if the Blues in Texas had moved on the sleep centers like they have here.  If we could come up with a cheaper device than the CPAP we've be doing most of the sleep devices.  This will push the average Home Health fee to about 100 bucks for the lower end CPAPs which is what the government is going to mandate.  I'm betting fewer and fewer people will tolerate that mask and will want to pay for an oral appliance or more expensive CPAP.  Guy

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Guy W. Moorman
The Swamp
Douglas, Georgia

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