Fast Track for Sleep Apnea

Access to medical care for patients with breathing disorders during sleep is a major problem for Canadians. Recently, there has been increasing interest in how health care providers who are not physicians can help to improve access to medical care for these patients, but it is unclear whether patients with severe sleep-disordered breathing who receive care from these non-physician providers have the same response to treatment as patients who receive care from physicians. Since these severe have a high risk of developing cardiac and respiratory complications and of being hospitalized, an initiative to improve access such as the use of non-physician providers could be of great benefit to individual patients and the health care system. The objectives of this project are: to determine whether patients with severe breathing disorders during sleep have the same response to treatment when cared for by non-physician health care providers (respiratory therapists) as they do when cared for by physicians; to determine the effects of non-physician health care provider treatment to patient access; to determine health care utilization and related costs associated with non-physician health care provider treatment.