They said it's easy to qualify patients for VPAP. All they have to do is have one blood gas with a PaCO2 greater than 50. It doesn't matter when that ABG was done. It could have even been done in the ER when the patient was having a flare-up.
One of the reps said that it's easy setting patients up on VPAP. All we had to do was notify them that a patient qualifies. Then they take over from there. They said that they talk to the doctor. They said that they talk to the patient. And then they set the patient us.
One of the reps is the one who works with the patients. He said that he has been doing this for two years, and only had one patient reject the machine. He said they are tolerated that much.
They made VPAP sound so good. They made it sound way better than BiPAP. And, as a bonus, it's hard to qualify a patient for home BiPAP from a hospital admission.
So many times we have had people on BiPAP. They had high PaCO2 levels at one point. But when it came time to discharge the patient, we were unable to qualify them for home BiPAP. So, not getting the BiPAP that they needed at night, they ended up being readmitted within a week or two.
So, the idea that VPAP works just as well as BiPAP. The idea that it is well tolerated. The idea that it's easy to set patients up with them for home use, was well accepted by the folks at the RT Cave.
My question is: is this too good to be true. Are we too quick to accept this? After all, these reps aim to make money off this. They are making money by getting Medicare to pay for VPAP machines. And, I've been told that it's these types of people who funded all the research. So, is the research tainted? These are questions I aim to investigate.
Anyway, I do see good about VPAP. I have seen a few patients using them who tolerated them well. But I'm still curious what the studies show.
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