Since the population is more tuned to seeing their dentist / dental hygienist on a more regular basis than their physician, in the absence of a specific problem, dentists and dental hygienists are well-positioned to screen and identify these potentially deadly conditions. As a result, you have patients in your office right now who are either undiagnosed for OSA or may be non-compliant with PAP (CPAP) therapy.
Traditionally, diagnosing the disorder could be inconvenient and costly because an overnight sleep study in a sleep lab or hospital was required to do so. Blackstone Medical Services has a solution for dentists and patients: we provide innovative home diagnostic testing for OSA that solves many of the problems providers currently face. Our testing services provide patients with better access to testing as they can complete these tests in the comfort of their own home, at a fraction of the cost of lab or hospital facility-based studies.
Patient compliance is often thought to be difficult to monitor with an unattended at-home study compared to overnight monitored testing. This is one of the primary reasons many dentists are hesitant to prescribe an at-home test. But it’s not the case. A 2013 study in the journal Sleep Review found that “the home testing pathway is not clinically inferior to the traditional PSG pathway.” Their findings have been confirmed in studies that looked at specific patient populations including those published in Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine in 2012 and 2014. The overwhelming body of clinical evidence supports at-home OSA diagnosis as an effective measure.
Managing in-office OSA testing devices – with the emergence of Dental Sleep Medicine, HST device manufacturers approached dentists to buy their own devices. Many dentists bought their own testing devices only to find that managing these devices lead to significant problems such as needing a dedicated staff person to manage devices, ongoing supply costs, device loss or damage, and patient delays in returning devices to name but a few, that leads to greater costs without the implied benefits to the bottom line.
Our experience, having spoken to many offices that have bought their own devices, is that trying to maintain one’s own devices leads to more resistance to testing rather than making this a more simple and efficient testing method for both the office staff and the patient. Leave the problems of device inventory loss or damage and delays in return to Blackstone Medical Services so that your staff can concentrate on the duties that give you a greater return.
In addition, Blackstone Medical Services is a JCAHO, AHCA, and Medicare accredited Independent Diagnostic Testing Facility. Utilizing our testing process allows the separation of testing from therapy.
Finding Sleep Doctors if your patient does not have a Primary Care Physician or you need to consult with a Sleep Specialist, depending on your location, we may be able to connect you with a PCP that is familiar with treating sleep or a Sleep Specialist in your area.
The Preferred Choice HST Service At Blackstone Medical Services, we understand the challenges that dentists face in diagnosing and treating OSA. Partnering with us reduces the barriers to testing that your patients face in terms of convenience and cost, without loss of accuracy, which in turn results in more opportunities to help patients receive the care they need and to stay on treatment for this potentially life-threatening condition.
If you need more information about how OSA is affecting your patients, visit any one of the links below. And if you’re ready to begin helping your patients with the highest in HST excellence, Blackstone Medical Services is ready to assist you. Contact us today to learn how.
Sources:
http://www.sleepreviewmag.com/2013/02/home-sleep-testing-versus-in-lab-polysomnography/
http://www.atsjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1164/ajrccm-conference.2012.185.1_MeetingAbstracts.A6437
http://www.atsjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1164/ajrccm-conference.2014.189.1_MeetingAbstracts.A3591