Doctors Answers (6)
The cost of sleep studies for cash pay patients varies from facilities to hospitals. If you are in our area, please call to discuss in detail. SomnoDiagnostics allows a discount for cash payment, however many facilities charge full price. When negotiating price, you should remind the provider that discounts are given to insurance companies and Medicare and Medicaid. Ask if they would consider re-pricing your study for you, as they do insurance companies.
Depending on the sleep study and center, typically the cost runs between $500 - $1000. This also depends on how many tests you need done. Please call the center to discuss the pricing.
The cost of a sleep study varies from sleep lab to sleep lab and city to city. The average cost of a diagnostic sleep study is about $1700. Hospital based sleep labs can, for some reason, charge twice that amount. Look for a lab associated with a physician who is board certified in sleep medicine. There will be charges for the doctor's consult and for the equipment to treat the sleep apnea. If the diagnostic study confirms sleep apnea then another night in the lab may be necessary and that charge may be $1900. Sometimes both the diagnostic portion and the night to test the equipment to treat the sleep apnea can be done in one night. The "equipment" is a CPAP machine. (Continuous Positive Airway Pressure). Sleep apnea commonly runs in families due to the familial anatomical similarities. All of this can be explained by the sleep doctor.
Sleep studies are usually expensive as the test involves spending the night in a lab. A trained and/or certified sleep technician is present for the entire night, ensuring the quality of test is maintained throughout the night, and that contributes to the high cost of testing. Most sleep labs have some kind of plan to cover non-insured patients and have options like payment plans, discounts, etc. You should probably check and get quotes from a couple of sleep labs in your area and see which one you would like to go to. In these situations, I often find myself telling my patients that getting the proper testing and treatment for sleep apnea may be worthwhile. If it will help you give you more energy, you may be able to recover the cost pretty quickly by being more efficient and productive at work.
Ok, this a great question since there are so many people that need to be evaluated for sleep apnea and yet many of them don't have health insurance for whatever reason. The in-house sleep study (the one in which you sleep overnight in a sleep center) will roughly be between 800-1200 dollars, depending on the sleep center. This is the best way to diagnose a sleep disorder. That being said, there is a home sleep study test (a device you wear overnight) that can do a reasonable job diagnosing obstructive sleep apnea, which is much cheaper. But home sleep study tests are not good at diagnosing other sleep disorders. An experienced sleep specialist will be able to let you know if the home diagnostic device is right for you.
The cost of a sleep study for a private patient without insurance is anywhere in the neighborhood of $2000-4000 for an attended study in the lab. Most labs are willing to finance over time if all this money can't be paid up front. Alternatively, a home sleep test could also be ordered instead for $200-300 per night to monitor you, and then an auto-titration with CPAP at home if necessary, if a sleep disordered breathing problem is found. Then, there is monthly rental of the CPAP machine and mask thereafter for about $75-100/month.
