Posted on 11/21/2018 2:01:28 PM PST by Tilted Irish Kilt
This is true - for the first 3 months of my CPAP usage, they had a little wireless receiver attached to the device, to monitor usage. After that, it’s assumed you will keep using it.
NOW, don’t get me started on this whole “Rent vs. Buy” thing...the crooks who supplied my CPAP machine wouldn’t let me buy it - I had to rent it - pay in installments, which upped the cost from about $700. to over $1000.
Scam artists!
How dare the people paying the bills want to have a role in the decision making process!!!
I also bought the machine outright, so there's no rental.
(I once learned I'd spent $1500 'renting' a water cooler over 18 years.....)
I believe our insurance company required the patient to average 4 hours of use a night, and did not inform the patient ahead of time, or at least the patient (my husband) did not read the small print.
Given that he often sleeps only four hours a night, and that he was getting used to have something strapped onto his face, he did not average four hours a night in the first month, and the first month was the only one the ins. company would look at. After multiple go rounds with machine supplier, ins. co., and doctor, he ended up paying an inflated price rather than wrecking our credit rating.
It's still worth it - he feels much better, and I no longer dream on lawn mowers and motor cycle gangs roaring through our bedroom, or wake up with him twitching and and gasping as though he's being strangled.
How anyone can sleep through suffocation I don't know.
I sort of wish it on insurance executives, though. They probably have diamond-crusted C-PAPS to go with their extra special platinum policies and retroactive oh let us fix it for you exceptions.
It has saved my brother’s life. And I mean that literally.
I just got a new CPAP. It uses cell phone technology to report to the manufacturer, the health insurance provider, and the equipment provider as well as to me as the patient.
I just got a new CPAP. It uses cell phone technology to report to the manufacturer, the health insurance provider, and the equipment provider as well as to me as the patient.
That may not work if the CPAP machine uses cell phone technology instead of WiFi.
My CPAP has cellular built in, so turning off my WiFi at night wouldn’t help.
I actually don’t mind the info sharing. The insurance company is paying for it, so they have an interest in making certain the machine is being used.
When I got my Apple Watch I downloaded a sleep monitoring app and discovered I spent most of the night “awake”. This convinced me to do a sleep study.
The results came back that I was having over 90 “episodes” of apnea an hour, with a fair percentage of the “central” as opposed to “obstructive”.
Obstructive is just as it sounds. Your airway gets obstructed and cuts off breathing. Not good.
Central is worse. If you have central apnea it means that your brain is forgetting to breath.
Both types can kill you, but central apnea freaks the doctors out a bit.
I have been using my CPAP for over a year now. It reports to an app so I can see each morning how effective it was. My obstructive apnea is all but eliminated. Central is still an issue, but the CPAP keeps me from dying.
Kim Kammando was talking on her show a few weeks ago that it looks like medical devices such as pacemakers and insulin pumps could be hacked. That ain’t good.
Bkmrk.
Those cheap and/or free ones are used equipment.
Exactly - insurance fraud is bad enough without folks taking items they won’t use just because they’re....”Free”....
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