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Benefits > Hospital Benefits
Why consider a sleep center for your hospital
or ASC?
A hospitals current challenge
- Increases in uncompensated patient care
- Increase in readmissions and extended length of stay
- Decline in elective procedures
- Increased administrative costs
- Decline in admissions
- No ability to increase capacity or provide renovations
- Staff reductions
- Cuts in hospital services
- Variable rate bond interest expense increase
- Increase in community subsidized services
- Increase in physicians seeking financial aid
Developing a sleep center is a great way to enhance your hospital or ASC while working closely with your physicians and providing a higher level of patient care
- Minimize the threats that your hospital faces, including competing physician-owned and corporate outpatient sleep centers.
- Expand your hospital’s capacity by redirecting sleep patients to your own efficient and lower-cost sleep center.
- Protect your hospital’s payer mix – don’t let your physicians leave your system, taking their best and most profitable cases with them.
- Preserve and expand your hospital’s market base and community presence.
- Leverage your sleep center as a recruiting tool in attracting new physicians.
- Create a competitive advantage with other hospitals.
- Improve your physician relationships and loyalty.
Owning a sleep center for the hospital or ASC can provide valuable economic and financial benefits
- Hospitalization rates are higher for patients with untreated sleep apnea (251 nights vs. 90 nights) (Kryger, et al., SLEEP 1997)
- Medical costs of undiagnosed sleep apnea patients were double in the year prior to diagnosis ($2720 vs. $1384) (Kapur, et al., SLEEP 1999)
- Prior to the patients apnea diagnosis, patients utilized 23-50% more medical resources (Smith, et al., CHEST 2002)
- One month of CPAP therapy improves daytime blood pressure, heart rate, and left ventricular function (Kaneko et al., New England Journal of Medicine 2003)
- Effective use of CPAP reduces arterial blood pressure by 10 mmHg after 9 weeks of therapy (Becker et al, Circulation 2003)
- Reduction in Left ventricular wall thickening (in 88% of apnea patients) after 6 months of CPAP (Cloward et al., Chest 2003)
- Fewer costly admissions and readmissions. 100% of HF patients on CPAP improve EF by 5-16% after just one month on CPAP therapy (Bradley et al., New England of Medicine 2005)
- The prevalence of undiagnosed surgical patients is ~24%. This is an opportunity for hospitals to identify patients requiring diagnosis and treatment
A sleep center can be built as an ancillary service either in-house or as a satellite facility off campus. Staying within the allowable distance from the hospital, you will still be able to use your same provider number for contracts and billing. An off campus sleep center can typically cost less to develop, avoids using valuable hospital space, produces better financial returns and provides a more friendly environment for patient testing.
Sleep centers can in many instances be placed in ASC facilities
making more productive use of space and providing a new revenue
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