The Sydney Morning Herald reports that sleep specialists in Australia are concerned patients visiting sleep clinics are being wrongly diagnosed for financial gain.
There are fears that many patients visiting commercial sleep clinics are being wrongly diagnosed with conditions so they will pay thousands of dollars for medical equipment they don’t need.
Leading sleep specialists at the Royal Melbourne Hospital are concerned about a trend towards diagnoses of sleep apnoea among patients who have had sleep studies done by private commercial clinics and companies that sell oxygen masks for the illness.
It comes as the federal health department is investigating a blowout in the number of sleep studies billed to Medicare in the past five years, many of which are not being carried out by sleep doctors.
This article can only relate to persons living in Australia, with rules, regulations and healthcare delivery systems very different from that of the United States. if you do not live in Australia, this article is meaningless, and worse yet, some persons might think apnea is over treated in the USA, when the opposite is much more likely, and be at risk of not seeking needed care.