How to Start a Sleep Lab or Center.

Beginning with the first sentence in chapter one, How to Start a Sleep Lab or Center, published by Sleep Center Management Institute, (SCMI) Atlanta, gives sound and practical advice for anyone embarking on start-up of this health service. It advises that the first step in such a move would be to consult with an attorney and accountant regarding the type of legal structure the service will entail. This is a good primer and lead in to a second edition of the publishers' other newest text, Sleep Lab Compliance and the Law, a two-volume edition that will be reviewed in a future edition of Focus.

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Written by Michael J. Breus, Ph.D., How to Start a Sleep Lab or Center presents as 197 pages divided into 20 chapters with a hefty appendix and preface. Chapters include timeline, types of sleep centers, physical facility considerations, equipment, supplies to start a two-bed lab, lab library, cost structures, market analysis, contracting, marketing your sleep center, financial pro forma, business plan, monitoring your bottom line, technicians and other essential personnel, training, personnel policies and procedures, technical policies and procedures, OSHA and the lab, quality assurance and accreditation. Appendices are labeled clearly from A through J, including a comprehensive glossary of terms. Appendix H, titled "Job Descriptions," is all-inclusive for each member of the sleep lab or center staff including descriptions for technical director and sleep lab secretary. Breus appropriately includes nationally standardized job descriptions for polysomnographic technologists, polysomnographic technicians and polysomnographic trainees as set by The American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM), Association of Polysomnographic Technologists (APT), Board of Registered Polysomnographic Technologists (BRPT) and American Society of Electroneurodiagnostic Technologists (ASET).

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Of his many non self-serving attributes in the book, Breus lists in the sixth chapter the essential publications considered "bibles" in the Sleep Arena. He warns that no lab should be without these scientific literary pearls so as to accommodate continued learning by sleep technologists and to create a nurturing environment for staff eager to learn more and have quality reference material at their fingertips. A former sleep technologist himself, Breus speaks to facility directors:

Another aspect of a lab that lets the technicians know that you as their director care about their needs is a lab library. By maintaining a library you foster the idea of education and science in your lab and often times allow your technicians a chance to read more on subjects they know little about. It can also help the technicians top keep up to date on reading requirements for registry and stay on the cutting edge of technology.

Technicians are not just drones who sit around all night and run sleep studies ... They are very interested in sleep medicine. That is often one of the reasons they got into it, not because it pays more than respiratory therapy. It was because they are interested in sleep."

The author appears very qualified to speak on the subject matter of the book. Breus is a board certified diplomate of the American Board of Sleep Medicine and leads as the clinical director of two four-bed facilities and two two-bed facilities in the greater Atlanta area. He was the only clinically reimbursable Ph.D. to have become boarded in sleep medicine in 2000. Breus has helped develop labs from the ground up, advised others on how to maintain profitable status, and facilitated bringing sleep labs through the accreditation process. He is a business columnist for several magazines, as well as provides selected articles, and is faculty member of the Atlanta School of Sleep Medicine teaching Business Practices of Sleep Centers in the classroom and workshop formats. He is dubbed the "Sleep Expert" for WebMD, an Internet health information site. He is also the author of How to Start a Sleep Lab; Reimbursement for Sleep Centers, Coding, Billing, Claim Submission and Denials for Sleep Labs and is a senior partner and Co-Founder of SCMI.

Reviewed by Theresa Shumard