The benefits of working with a hospital-based sleep center: Most hospital-based sleep labs have been structured as part of the hospital’s outpatient department or outpatient programs, and sleep studies are billed under the hospital’s outpatient provider number and under the Outpatient Prospective Payment System (OPPS) for Medicare patients. Hospitals and health systems have historically established sleep labs within the hospital or on the hospital’s campus. What is a hospital-based sleep center and who is it best for? This is the responsibility of the referring physician (in some cases, the referring physician may also interpret the sleep study). If an IDTF provides your sleep study, typically, the supervising physician or interpreting physician may not provide a prescription for recommended therapy, like CPAP, or engage in discussion about treatment or next steps with the patient.

A large network of sleep centers, which is more likely to be an IDTF, may have more leverage from economies of scale when contracting with insurance companies and may therefore have more insurance contracts.Sleep centers that are set up as IDTFs and are not limited by more strict accreditation guidelines (read more about voluntary accreditation standards for sleep centers below) and may have more flexibility in providing services as requested by ordering physicians.The benefits of working with an IDTF sleep center: An IDTF located somewhere other than in a hospital building cannot share office space or equipment with a physician, physician practice or other entity.An IDTF must be surveyed and approved by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and will have it’s own Medicare provider number.The supervising physician may not order sleep studies to be performed by the IDTF, unless the IDTF’s supervising physician is, in fact, the Medicare beneficiary’s treating physician.The supervising physician must perform a general level of supervision over the operations of non physician personnel (click these links to learn more about sleep disorders and the types of studies used to diagnose them). The IDTF sleep center must provide for a supervising physician responsible for direct and ongoing oversight of the quality of the polysomnography (sleep study) test performed, proper operation and calibration of any equipment, the qualification of non physician personnel to operate such equipment, and supervision of those non physician personnel. What are the different types of sleep centers that offer diagnostic testing for sleep disorders and what are the benefits of each?Īn IDTF is a diagnostic testing facility (entity) that is independent of a physician office or hospital ie, it is not owned by a hospital, individual physician or group practice of physicians and its purpose is to furnish diagnostic tests and not to directly use test results to treat a patient.

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