Terminal Decline? Academic and clinical fields have their booms and busts just like economies. Sleep Medicine is no exception. A field that took off from the 1990s until the 2010s is now in palpable decline. This year a total of 112 sleep fellowships were filled in the nationwide medical match. America is presently training one potentially certifiable […]
Saving Sleep Medicine
Sleep medicine appears in decline. Sleep centers and laboratories are closing at record rates. Yet how can sleep medicine be dying when the population suffers so much from insomnia and sleep apnea, while the public increasingly recognizes sleep as critical to happiness, performance, and preventing most major medical illnesses? The answer: insurance reimbursement. After Colin Sullivan […]
What Will Happen to Sleep Medicine? (8/4/14)
Sleep medicine is about to change. With luck it will change how people treat and view sleep. What will disappear? The present treatment model – what I’ll call the “Sleep Apnea Testing Service Model”- after the suggestion of Dr. Michael Grandner. What will replace it? Hopefully a treatment format that addresses and improves both individual […]
Is Sleep Apnea Boring? (2/3/14)
Clinical Fascination Boredom can prove very personal. A few weeks ago I sat down in the hospital cafeteria. At my table was a polite, bright pulmonologist. He expressed sympathy for my work: “I find sleep apnea so boring.” For a doctor like him there’s isn’t much to do with sleep apnea. Somebody comes in. They […]
Who’s stealing my sleep? (3/4/11)
Thieves of Rest Who would steal a CPAP machine? One could imagine patients faced with reluctant health insurers might just go out and their own sleep apnea therapy – but lifting 39 machines? Cheryl Pender of Indiana University Health at La Porte has posted bail on the charge of stealing 29 CPAP and 10 BiPAP […]