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My experience wasn't nearly as bad as the OP's - one at-home sleep study, a tester CPAP machine for a week, and a prescription to get my own CPAP soon after. (M
by neilk 15y ago
My experience wasn't nearly as bad as the OP's - one at-home sleep study, a tester CPAP machine for a week, and a prescription to get my own CPAP soon after. (My health provider/insurer was Kaiser, which is more integrated, so perhaps they have less incentive to milk it.)
It was, however, strange to need a prescription to buy a machine. The prescription includes the settings, so when it arrives, it's already tailored to your needs.
Even so, the machines I was given were relatively easy to understand -- I even fiddled with the settings a bit and found what was more comfortable. The machine I bought for myself is a DeVibliss, and part of its appeal is that comes with software to read its data. It is proprietary and Windows only, but likely hackable since we have readouts of what the data means. I haven't gotten around to figuring that out.
Medical techs take a really dim view of patients fiddling with settings. I know they did when I asked them all kinds of questions. Their assumption, which is probably verified for them daily, is that patients have no idea what they're doing, and conceding authority is to invite disaster. Hackers may trust themselves to figure something out, but let's be serious -- we can be aggressive because it's just data. We forget all the times we hose the filesystem, corrupt the database, have catastrophic memory leaks, and so on. Medicine is not as forgiving as computing.
Still, with CPAP, it's probably very difficult to cause yourself injury. Maybe a more open policy would be appropriate.
- X-Istence 15y agoAs a hacker and someone that has a few things that I take medicine for I ask a lot of questions, and do a lot of research. My doctors always find it interesting when I can pull up full charts and graphs of data that they simply have written down, mine will generally be more accurate and has contained data points that they didn't have due to being measurements I took at certain times of day (blood pressure), and it has helped them give me the medicine I require. Not all patients are dumb, and while it has taken me a while to get my doctor to realise this, she has started realising that maybe there is something more to it and that it will be beneficial to both of us. I understand the CYA policy, and I understand that for most patients that is the best way to go about it, but for those of us who are outliers I think it may be beneficial because we may have more time to look at the data and find significant data (and then get them verified by a doctor) than some other people. It is in my own personal best interest to be as healthy as possible and if I can do that by knowing more about what is going on with my body, then all the better!
- raverbashing 15y ago>> It was, however, strange to need a prescription to buy a machine Well, people need a prescription for glasses, so not that strange afterall. I suppose if you know your prescription (only the values) they won't give you the glasses, it has to be a proper prescription
- sbierwagen 15y agoWrong. http://www.eyebuydirect.com/ http://www.eyebuydirect.com/
- raverbashing 15y agoThis is not true for contact lenses You are required to present a prescription and give the doctor's name to buy online e.g. http://www.coastal.com/new-visitors.ep?ilid=lnav http://www.coastal.com/new-visitors.ep?ilid=lnav Also, the requirement of a prescription to buy glasses varies from country to country.