Cardiologists Sleep Apnea Program
Helping your patients maintain their health is of the utmost importance in your role as a cardiologist. Through your evaluations, you may find a reason to believe that your patient is suffering from sleep apnea. As obstructive sleep apnea places great strain on the cardiovascular system, cardiologists should be sure that no sleep apnea is present when developing a treatment plan for their patients.
If your evaluation uncovers sleep apnea, you likely refer them to a traditional sleep study in a sleep lab. However, traditional sleep studies are expensive, and the waiting time to get into a sleep center can be problematic — preventing them from getting the treatment they need in a timely fashion.
Instead of referring patients out for sleep studies to check for sleep apnea, cardiologists can now partner with ApneaMed to bring fast, accurate, and affordable sleep apnea testing into their practices.
Different Ways Cardiologists Can Partner With ApneaMed
At ApneaMed, our goal is to make sleep apnea testing and treatment easily accessible for all individuals suspected of having sleep apnea. Our team provides our partnered cardiologists with easy access to sleep apnea testing. With the ApneaMed home sleep study, patients use our home sleep test unit to gather the needed sleep data. Our sleep physicians will analyze the information, provide the results, and recommend a treatment plan with collected patient sleep data.
Depending on your preference, there are three different ways that cardiologists can partner with ApneaMed to bring sleep apnea testing to your practice.
Option 1: Referral Partnership
Have a trusted team by your side to help with patients you suspect have sleep apnea. With the ApneaMed referral partnership, cardiologists refer patients directly to our team. For instance, if you have a patient showing several warning signs of obstructive sleep apnea, you will refer them to us by having them fill out our referral form.
Once we receive the patient’s referral form from a member of your team, one of our patient care specialists will contact the patient to arrange one of our home sleep tests to be sent to their home.
After taking the test, the patient will mail the test unit back to us, where our sleep physicians will analyze the information and send the results to the patient. ApneaMed can provide them with a recommended treatment plan, along with the necessary breathing equipment. This hands-off approach is excellent for a cardiology practice that wants to increase its offerings without using its own resources.
Option 2: In-Office Partnership
For cardiologists who opt for our in-office partnership, ApneaMed sends a white-label home sleep test to your office for you to keep onsite. That way, when you have a patient come into your cardiology practice exhibiting signs of sleep apnea, you can directly provide them with the sleep apnea test unit. After they finish the test, your patients return the test unit to you.
This is an ideal choice for cardiology practices that want to handle everything related to diagnosing sleep apnea from start to finish, allowing you to be the middleman and remain the main point of contact for your patient throughout the testing period.
Our team will be guided by you and work in the background to provide your patients with a diagnosis and treatment plan. Because you will be the one providing your patients with the sleep apnea home sleep test, you can determine what to bill them, and your office can bill the patient’s insurance company.
Option 3: Mail-Out Partnership
Another cardiologist partnership option through ApneaMed is our mail-out partnership. For those who don’t want to store the sleep apnea home sleep test in your office, cardiologists can order a home sleep test directly from ApneaMed and have the test unit sent to their patients. We will mail the home sleep test directly to your patients, who will complete the test and mail it back to us.
One of our sleep physicians will review the collected sleep data with the returned test, and ApneaMed will contact the patient with the results. Because you are the middleman in this scenario ordering the test for your patient, your office can determine the charge for the testing and bill the patient’s insurance directly.
Cardiologists Can Benefit From Partnering With ApneaMed
Because obstructive sleep apnea places great strain on the cardiovascular system, there are many ways a partnership with ApneaMed can benefit a cardiology practice, including:
Faster Answers
Sleep studies often have long waitlists and can be difficult to schedule. Instead of having your patients potentially wait months for answers, by partnering with ApneaMed, you can provide them with fast answers concerning their potential sleep apnea.
Brochures and Resources
When we partner with cardiologists, we ensure you have everything to successfully market our sleep apnea tests. We never leave you empty-handed, providing you with all the necessary materials and resources to discuss sleep apnea with your patients. We provide you with:
- Free patient brochures - Educate your patients about the risks associated with sleep apnea and treatment options.
- Sleep apnea screening tools - Use our provided screening tools to check patients you think may be dealing with sleep apnea before recommending the home test.
- Home Sleep Test units - Send patients home with your practice’s own home sleep test unit from ApneaMed.
- Sleep test results - Using the home sleep test unit, patients can receive a legal diagnosis for their sleep apnea from an ApneaMed medical practitioner. This allows them to purchase an AutoPAP device to treat their sleep apnea.
- Devices - Should your patient receive a mild to moderate sleep apnea diagnosis after completing the home sleep test, ApneaMed will provide you with a physician’s recommendation for an oral appliance. If the patient is severe, AutoPAP will be recommended per industry guidelines.
In-Practice Access
Why refer your patients to another practitioner for sleep apnea testing when you can diagnose and treat them in practice? Rather than referring your patients out-of-house, by partnering with ApneaMed, you can provide your patients with easy access to sleep apnea testing.
This will not only keep your patients coming back to you for your services but will open up your practice to additional patients looking for sleep apnea testing.
Service Offerings
Through a partnership with ApneaMed, cardiologists can increase their service offerings and reach more patients. Providing sleep apnea testing for your patients not only allows you to expand your customer base by serving a larger portion of the market and bringing in more prospective customers but earn additional revenue from this new service.
With the ability to provide sleep apnea testing, you can distinguish your cardiology practice from others and attract new patients with your wider array of services.
ApneaMed Can Provide Sleep Apnea Solutions For Your Cardiology Practice
Untreated sleep apnea can have a variety of severe cardiovascular side-effects, ranging from high blood pressure to heart attacks. When cardiologists see patients, particularly male patients, with several of the warning signs of obstructive sleep apnea such as obesity, daytime fatigue, and other signs, these patients must receive sleep apnea testing.
With the ability to partner with ApneaMed, cardiologists can bring sleep apnea testing directly into their practices. By offering this kind of testing, cardiologists can more effectively treat their patients’ cardiovascular issues and provide a superior array of services.
To learn more about what type of sleep apnea partner program would be best for your cardiology practice, be sure to contact us here at ApneaMed. We will be happy to answer any questions you may have about the partnership program and how our sleep apnea testing works.