SleepQuest - Community - Why is CPAP Compliance Important?

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What is compliance anyway?

Compliance simply means that a patient is carrying out a prescribed treatment plan exactly as directed. In most cases, this will mean that their condition, disorder or disease is cured, or under control. The treatment plan can be as simple as taking medications or as complicated as doing physical therapy. In the case of OSA (Obstructive Sleep Apnea), it means proper use of a CPAP machine on a regular basis.

When patients don't comply with treatment, the consequences can be very negative for the patient. The patient continues suffering from the complex of OSA symptoms and complications that can include fatigue, confusion, falling asleep at inappropriate times and decreased productivity. Many fatal and non fatal victims of stroke and heart attack may have avoided death or disability, if their OSA had been diagnosed and treated prior to the occurrence of the catastrophic event. Furthermore, individuals with OSA at the moderate to severe level are 4.5 times as likely to have coronary heart disease, myocardial infarction, and angina as are those without sleep apnea. On the other hand, we have seen patients whose hypertension and Congestive Heart Failure (CHF) were completely reversed by successful treatment of their severe OSA.

Multiple factors influence compliance

We are convinced beyond the shadow of a doubt from our experience that treatment compliance and its associated benefits rise dramatically with high quality patient training, education, communication and follow up. A great example from a different area of medicine is diabetes. It has been repeatedly demonstrated that when well educated, informed patients comply with treatment, and proactively manage their condition, the incidence of secondary complications is dramatically reduced or eliminated. This results in higher quality of life for the patient, less visits to the physician over time, and reduced cost to treat these patients.

While CPAP compliance is difficult to track, several studies indicate that it is influenced by a variety of factors. These include; severity of the disease, quality of patient training and education, initial success/problems, participation in a support group, mask-related comfort and claustrophobia, follow-up and monitoring by health care professionals, patient motivation, use of humidification, treatment reactions, and patient age. One of the reasons for SleepQuest's successful compliance rate is that our high-quality training, education, and long term monitoring identify these problem early and address them immediately, before they have a chance to affect the patients' motivation and treatment success.

Why is compliance so important to HMO's and insurance companies?

No one is advocating witholding necessary treatment based on cost considerations alone, but PPO's, physician groups, HMO's and insurance companies have to watch their costs just like any other business. High patient compliance helps them do it while still providing necessary and quality care to the patient. More than one study has documented the fact that undiagnosed OSA patients have approximately twice the health care costs as patients from the general population.

High patient compliance directly results in increased physician and patient referrals. Patients call us and their doctors all the time to relate the positive experience they had with SleepQuest because they were well-educated, experienced dramatic resolution of their sleep problem and subsequent improvement in their quality of life by using the treatment plan. See Testimonials

CPAP compliance works!

The bottom line is that when patients use their machines on a regular basis, their condition is managed, they get the sleep that they need which means they're not suffering from daytime fatigue, and worrying about work performance. They can get back to doing what is really important - getting on with their life.