by BENEDICT CAREY from the New York Times

Brief respiratory problems during sleep may play a larger role in causing insomnia than the usual suspects, a small study suggests.

READ MORE at NYTimes.com

Dr. Barry Krakow on PTSD, Insomnia, and Sleep Apnea

Market success depends on getting sleep-disorder breathing patients to use therapy devices

Compliance is the Holy Grail of sleep-disorder breathing therapy. Technologies such as continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) devices only work if patients use them, and yet industry statistics suggest compliance rates hovering around 50 percent, to the detriment of both patient well-being and DME/HME providers’ bottom line.

Compliance is critical to successful treatment of sleep-disorder breathing and also to the success of DME/HME providers. It’s clearly in everyone’s interests to boost compliance, but how?

Devoting time and resources to ensure compliance is particularly challenging for DME providers in the age of competitive bidding, says Mitchell Yoel, executive vice president of business development and government affairs at Drive Medical Design and Manufacturing. “Current pressures on providers are coming from multiple fronts,” he says. “Providers must both facilitate and confirm compliance with PAP therapy to ensure clinical outcomes and reimbursement, and must also manage the operational costs associated with the amount of time clinical staff spends on PAP patients to get the appropriate fit and comfort.”

Read more...