An estimated 83 million American adults live with obstructive sleep apnea, and roughly 80 to 90 percent of them have never been diagnosed. The gap is not primarily a technology problem, and the newest effort to close it is aimed at the referral pathway rather than at a device.
The American Thoracic Society is working with four health-system teams on a quality improvement project called Optimizing Sleep Apnea Diagnosis in Primary Care, launched this year. The participating sites are West Virginia University, the VA Pittsburgh Healthcare System, the San Francisco Health Network with the University of California San Francisco, and the Mount Sinai Health System. Each will partner with primary care colleagues to increase identification and testing.
