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a supplement to Sleep Review

Our annual profile of
some of the industry’s
top sleep doctors
and facilities

A national directory
of sleep doctors
committed to excellence.

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Table of Contents
4	Inventing the Future of Sleep
Medicine

	Sleep professionals at Washoe Sleep Disorders Center are
exploring how sleep deprivation affects cognitive abilities
and neurological disorders. Using the Eye-Comtm Biosensor,
Communicator and Controller eye-tracking system, developed
by William Torch, MD, researchers are gaining insights into
yet another fertile area of sleep research.
	

By Tina Page

	Prabhat Soni, MD, FCCP, DABSM, tackles issues of awareness
and screening in sleep medicine in the United States and India.
	by Renee Diiulio

	Under the leadership of Sunil Sharma, MD, DABSM, the East
Carolina University Sleep Disorders and Research Center is
taking a truly multidisciplinary approach to sleep disorder
treatment.
By Greg Thompson

16 	The Broad Approach: Patient Care,
Education, Research

	The Cleveland Sleep Centers: Improving sleep health care from
every angle.
By Alison Werner

18 	 Continuity of Care

By Tina Page

by Phyllis Hanlon

22 	 Putting Care into Health Care

	The International Institute of Sleep has implemented a myriad of
programs that support both patients and the sleep profession.
By Tina Page

24 	 Rooted in Health Care

	Business acumen and ambition to work in health care led Steve
Cela to form Apnix Sleep Diagnostics.
By Tina Page

25 	A Commitment to Comprehensive
Care

	Pulmonary Associates of Richmond’s Sleep Disorder Centers
have made a commitment to providing comprehensive and
individualized care to local sleep patients.

	

by Alison Werner

26 	 Motivated Drive

	Ahmad M. Ibrahimbacha, MD, an inspired physician with
Syrian roots, delivers optimal care to a vast network of
sleep disorder patients.
	

	Douglas Livornese, MD, FACP, FCCP, FAASM, designed a
resourceful CPAP compliance program that makes it difficult for
patients not to adhere with therapy.
	

	

	

14 	 The Team Approach

	

	As health care evolves, Alexander Villareal, MD, keeps
Geisinger Health Systems, Sleep Disorders Centers, ahead of
the curve.

	

10 	 Sleeping Giants

	

20 	 Proactive Patient Care

By Nina Silberstein

27	 Making Things Better

	The Weill Cornell Center for Sleep Medicine seeks to advance
sleep medicine through comprehensive care, quality processes,
and intense research.
	

by Renee Diiulio

Sleep Review Best of 2012 Program Panel
Edward Grandi, executive director, American Sleep Apnea Association
Michael Goldman, sleep health evangelist and creator of www.SleepGuide.com
Tracy R. Nasca, founder and senior vice president of Talk About Sleep Inc

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Abraham, Sunoj, MD

Citrus Pulmonary Consultants
Crystal River, Fla
352.795.1999

Ahmed, Mansoor, MD, FCCP,
FABSM
Cleveland Sleep Centers
Middleburg Heights, Ohio
440.243.8044	
www.clevelandsleeps.com

See
page 16

Ahmed, Qanta, MD

Winthrop-University Hospital Sleep
Disorders Center
Garden City, NY
516.663.3907
www.winthrop.org

Ajayi, Akinyemi, MD

The Children’s Lung, Asthma and
Sleep Specialists
Winter Park, Fla
407.898.2767
www.childrenssleeplab.com

Amin, Mohammad, MD

St. Charles Hospital Sleep Disorders
Center
Port Jefferson, NY
631.474.6277
www.stcharles.org

Barthlen, Gabriele M., MD, PhD
Sleep Center Hawaii
Pearl City, Hawaii
808.456.7378
www.sleepcenterhawaii.com

Bogan, Richard, MD
SleepMed
Columbia, SC
800.373.7326
www.sleepmed.md

Boota, Ahmad, MD

Bon Secours St. Francis Health System
Sleep Center
Greenville, SC
864.269.2801
www.stfrancishealth.org

Brown, Stephen E., MD

Memorial Pulmonary & Sleep Consultants
Long Beach, Calif
562.290.8888
www.memorialcare.org

Carstensen, Steve, DDS

Bellevue Dental Sleep Medicine
Bellevue, Wash
425.746.0021
www.stevecarstensendds.com

Cataletto, Mary, MD

Winthrop-University Hospital Sleep
Disorders Center
Garden City, NY
516.663.3907
www.winthrop.org

Chalaka, Sridar, MD
The Everett Clinic
Everett, Wash
800.533.7035
www.everettclinic.com

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Charlotte Eye Ear Nose & Throat Associates
Belmont, NC
704.295.3700
www.ceenta.com

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Abbasi-Feinberg, Fariha, MD

Sleep Review’s annual profile of some of the
industry’s top sleep doctors and facilities

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BEST OF 2012
sleep doctors

Cooke, Jana, MD

Gardner, Jack, MD

Delgado, Humberto R., MD

Garwood, Mark, MD

The Everett Clinic
Everett, Wash
800.533.7035
www.everettclinic.com

Medical Sleep Solutions
DeSoto, Tex
972.709.7190
www.medicalsleep.com

Lake Pulmonary/Sleep Disorders
Leesburg, Fla
352.728.0709

Desai, Avinash, MD

Lung and Sleep Center, PC
Waterford, Mich
248.681.7909
www.lungandsleepcenter.com

Draw, Azmi, MD

Greater Ann Arbor Sleep Disorders
Center
Brighton, Mich
810.534.1170
www.gaasleep.com

Gilbey, Jack, MD

Texas Pulmonary Sleep Center
Arlington, Tex
817.461.8772
www.tpsctr.com

Greatens, Todd, MD

St. Vincent Salem Hospital
Salem, Ind
812.883.5881
www.stvincent.org

Sleep Center of Central Minnesota
Baxter, Minn
888.481.3652
www.baxtersleepclinic.com

Eagle, Rebecca, MD

Green, Ronald, MD

El-Gendy, Alaa, MD

Greenberg, Harly, MD

Florida Lung & Sleep Associates
Lehigh Acres, Fla
239.369.3333
www.chestinstitute.net

North Shore-Long Island Jewish
Health System Sleep Disorders Center
Great Neck, NY
516.465.3899
www.northshorelij.com

Escobar-Cordoba, Franklin,
MD, PhD

Greif, Paul, MD

Charnock, Edwin, MD
Medical Sleep Solutions
DeSoto, Tex
972.709.7190
www.medicalsleep.com

Fundacion Sueno Vigilia Colombiana
IPS
Bogota, Colombia
www.fundasuvicol.org

Coll, John B., DO

Espiritu, Joseph, MD

Grinman, Lev, MD

CNMRI Sleep Disorders Center
Dover, Del
302.678.8100
www.cnmri.com

SLUCare Sleep Disorders Center
St Louis, Mo
866.977.4440
www.slu.edu

Conroy, Robert, DO

Esther, M. Susan, MD

Chandra, Anuj, MD

Advanced Center for Sleep Disorders
Chattanooga, Tenn
423.648.8008
www.sleepforhealth.org

Chang, Samuel, MD
Delta Waves Inc
Colorado Springs, Colo
719.262.9283
www.deltawaves.org

Hawthorn Medical Associates, LLC
Dartmouth, Mass
508-996-3991
www.hawthornmed.com

Oklahoma Sleep Associates
Norman, Okla
405.307.1000
www.normanregional.com

The Everett Clinic
Everett, Wash
800.533.7035
www.everettclinic.com

Pulmonary and Sleep Medicine of
Norwich
Norwich, Conn
860.204.9735
www.norwichpulmonary.com
Comprehensive Medical Services PC
New York, NY
888.929.7533
www.isleepprogram.com

Haas, Jamie, MD

The Sleep Center at SouthPark
Charlotte, NC
704.295.3000
www.ceenta.com

Patients First Health Care Sleep
Center
Washington, Mo
636.390.1776
www.patientsfirsthc.com
Continued on page 9

	

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Washoe Sleep Disorders Center

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Inventing the Future
of Sleep Medicine
By Tina Page
Sleep professionals at Washoe Sleep
Disorders Center are exploring how sleep
deprivation affects cognitive abilities and
neurological disorders. Using the EyeCom tm Biosensor, Communicator and
Controller eye-tracking system, developed
by William Torch, MD, researchers are
gaining insights into yet another fertile
area of sleep research.
Heart and lung specialists have increasingly
focused on the consequences of poor sleep,
but what about brain researchers? For
neurologist William Torch, MD, the sleep/brain
connection is a chief area of concern, and that
interest has simmered since the early days of
sleep medicine.
When Torch came from New York City
to Nevada in 1979 to join the Pediatrics
Department at the University of Nevada
School of Medicine in Reno, he became the
Silver State’s first pediatric neurologist. In
addition to his MD from the University of
Rochester School of Medicine, he brought
credentials as a researcher with an MS degree
in biochemistry.

Evolution of a Sleep Doctor
During his neurology residency in 1974,
Torch met Dr Elliott Weitzman, chairman of
neurology at the Albert Einstein College of
Medicine, sparking a lifelong dedication to
sleep medicine research. Torch had always
been intrigued with the curious EEG brain
waves associated with pediatric and adult
sleep states, especially Weitzman’s pioneering
research on rapid eye movement (REM) and
the mysteries of sleep neurophysiology, also
being explored by Dr William Dement at

4	

Stanford University.
At the time, sleep medicine was a “dark
science” and few doctors recognized the
importance of sleep in daytime functions.
From that point on, Torch and sleep
medicine would unwittingly cross paths,
resulting in many research innovations.
Once settled in Nevada, Torch started the
Neuro-Developmental & Neuro-Diagnostic
Center (NDC) as a multidisciplinary clinic
treating neurological disorders, and
performing regular and 24-hour ambulatory
and quantitative EEGs on children and
adults with attention deficit disorder (ADD),
epilepsy, sleep, and other neuropsychiatric
disturbances, while also serving as the
medical director of the Northern Nevada
Muscular Dystrophy Association clinic.
Torch and sleep medicine began traveling
the same path after a fortuitous 1984 meeting
with experimental psychologist Dr John
Zimmerman, who had previously worked in a
Colorado sleep lab. When Zimmerman offered
to start the first sleep disorders clinic in Reno,
Torch agreed, and the Washoe Sleep Disorders
Center (WSDC) was born. The venture brought
sleep medicine and neurology under one roof,
while laying the groundwork for Eye-Com
Corporation (ECC) in 1998.

Humble Beginnings
Torch and Zimmerman started the WSDC
from scratch with the support of the Washoe
Medical Center, which provided space
for a one-bed sleep lab. Together, they
built their own primitive sleep recording
polysomnographic equipment, attaching a
camera to a makeshift paper tracing EEG
machine that they lugged around the hospital,
while performing less than five inpatient
polysomnograms (PSGs) each month. “It was
an expensive joke,” Torch says, and “when
we started a sleep medicine grand rounds
teaching program, we also found that no one
believed in sleep medicine as a discipline, and
only a few would come.”
Nevertheless, after 3 years the lab was
performing about five to 10 inpatient sleep
studies per month. By 1994, the WSDC had
grown into a two-bed lab performing 20 to 30
inpatient and outpatient sleep studies each
month.
Soon afterwards, it received its first
5-year accreditation from the American
Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM), with
three more 5-year reaccreditations to come.
Torch finally moved the NDC/WSDC into its
new four-bed facility in the Renown Center
for Advanced Medicine, while gradually

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expanding its staff of two to 12, including
the Lab Director, Dr Paul Saskin, six boardcertified sleep and EEG technicians, and
two nurse practitioners. The NDC/WSDC
now accommodates more than 400 patient
visits and performs 70 to 90 sleep studies
each month, with expectations of doubling
in size over the next 2 years. In recognition
of his Nevada accomplishments, Torch was
elected as the first president of the AASMsponsored Nevada Sleep Society.

Evolution of an Inventor
Torch wears three hats as a clinician,
researcher, and inventor, and he has dreamed
up a number of sleep-related inventions
during his own REM sleep. This included the
Sleep Managertm—a hardware and software
calculating system (soon to become an Apple
App), which can help prevent jet lag and shift
work fatigue, and the Eye-Com tm Biosensor,
Communicator and Controller.
Torch’s goal has always been to deploy
new technologies to help neurologically
disabled children and adults with progressive
neuromuscular disorders such as muscular
dystrophy or ALS, as well as more static
conditions like cerebral palsy, stroke, and
traumatic spinal cord or brain injury, to
achieve independence and freedom of
movement.
Torch’s vision to help such victims
materialized in 1998, when asked to consult
on a young man named Glen, who awoke from
a coma on a ventilator in an ICU, following a

EC-1

stroke to his cervical spinal cord—the result of
viral encephalomyelitis. The condition left him
totally quadriplegic. “The only way he could
communicate was to move his eyes and blink
once or twice in response to yes/no questions
… and cry,” Torch says. “The patient was in a
near locked-in-state.
“I went down to Radio Shack and bought
about $2.50 worth of IR emitter-detectors
and electronic components and built a blink
detector, now known as Eye-Com 1 (EC-1). I
figured that if I could capture the short and
long blinks of this unfortunate fellow, convert
them into computerized Morse code dots and
dashes, and then into text on a computer, this
would give him the gift of communication with
loved ones and caretakers. Thus, the passion
to develop the Eye-Com as a Biosensor,
Communicator and Controller stepped out of
my neurology practice.”
After creating the EC-1 “blinkometer,” Torch
realized that the simple device that helped
Glen could be modified to help other paralyzed
individuals with different degrees of disability
as well, and at the same time it could be
used to identify the long and short blinks and
other oculometrics associated with drowsiness
and microsleeps for use in transportation and
industrial safety applications.

device and technology, to its current to-becommercialized EC-8 HawkEye Model. Torch’s
passion for invention, and love for teaching,
won the respect of his colleagues in the
Nevada Inventors Association (NIA), and he
was soon elected as NIA vice president, and
then president.
While NIA president, his EC-4 system was
featured in Forbes ASAP, in an article titled
“The Inventor Next Door.” Because of the
Eye-Com research he had been doing, he
was then invited to a “New Technologies in
Driver Vigilance Conference” sponsored by
the American Trucking Association (ATA) and
US Department of Transportation (USDOT)
in Washington, DC. By that time, EC-4 had
evolved to the point that it could transmit
drowsy blink signals through walls by RF
telephonic and satellite connections, trigger
local audible alarms for emergency responses,
as well as connect by wired or wireless
connection with EEG and PSG machines
in the vicinity, or to remote receiving or
monitoring stations 3,000 miles away, as it
did in Cambridge, Mass, by setting off eyeblink triggered Lifeline alarms at that site.
Operating as a drowsiness detector that
could alert a sleepy driver, EC-4 could also,
as a communication-controller device, be used
to type messages on a computer screen by
purposeful eye blinks.
Torch brought his EC-4 to the conference
where he was first introduced to the term
“PERCLOS,” an acronym for the percentage
of time one’s eyes are closed over a period

Reinventing Safety Behind the
Wheel
EC-1 incrementally evolved through a series
of progressive EC-2 through EC-7/8 iterations,
as a Biosensor, Communication and Controller

EC-4

	

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of time. Torch instantly realized that he
had, without awareness, already created
a wearable, wireless PERCLOS-monitoring
eye-blink Biosensor, Communicator and
Controller. The PERCLOS algorithm had
been developed by other researchers in the
sleep and transportation safety field, out of
video analysis of a sleepy driver’s eyes in a
research driving simulator. Soon thereafter,
the PERCLOS metric was announced by the
USDOT as the best bio-physiological measure
of drowsiness available, even over EEG,
Torch says.
At the conference, Torch met colleague Col
Michael Russo, MD, a neurologist who was
to become a section chair of the AASM Sleep
Deprivation Committee. Russo immediately
recognized that Eye-Com technology could
contribute to solving the problem of soldier
and military truck drivers falling asleep on
long truck convoys, as had occurred during
Desert Storm operations, or of army helicopter
pilots falling asleep at the controls of a
multimillion-dollar Black Hawk or Apache
helicopter.
After attending the conference, Torch
realized that there were other ocular
manifestations relating to sleepiness and
arousal, where, for example, slow downward
lid movements might indicate gradual
falling asleep, while a sudden upward
eyelid movement might signify an arousal
or startled response. He also realized that
the rate and diameter size change of a pupil
was important as a predictor of progressive
drowsiness where, as shown in experimental
pupillometry studies, the sleepier you
become, the smaller and less reactive your
pupil gets over time.
Based on these realizations, Torch went on
to develop the EC-5, which could measure
PERCLOS and upward and downward lid
velocities. Next, by attaching two Eye-Com
“micro-endocameras” to an eye-frame,
one below and aimed at each eye, and a
single “exo-camera” aimed forward from the
nasal bridge just above the nose, he could
monitor pupils, eyeball movements, and

6	

William Torch, MD, wearing EC-7/8

EC-7

gaze characteristics as well. These were the
oculometrics that might be associated with
microsleep intrusions, brain fog, and tunnel
vision.
One year later, Torch was invited to
another USDOT-sponsored conference on
driver vigilance that spurred him to create
the “ideal sleep detection and safety
response device.” During that 1-year
interval, the USDOT had realized the
importance of eye movement and gaze,
announcing a second follow-up conference
called “New Ocular Technologies in Driving

Vigilance.” This time the NDC/WSDC and
Eye-Com Corporation came, not as a
spectator, but as a participant, displaying
its ground-breaking technology in a booth
next to that of another company, Real Time
Technology, which was looking for a device
that could trigger their proprietary tactile
race-car seat to vibrate a person awake.
The match “made in heaven,” Torch says,
resulted in an EC-6 vibrating seat that was
eventually installed into a Dodge-Ram EyeCom truck simulator that was built over the
next year in the WSDC.

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Funding the Future of Safety
While Torch was serving as NIA president,
he also was told of an upcoming Phase I
Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR)
Solicitation Grant sponsored by the Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
Division of Accident and Injury Protection.
The solicitation called for new technology
that could: 1) identify drowsiness; 2) call for
emergency assistance for elderly individuals;
and 3) assist in the neuro-rehabilitation
process of those injured in an accident.
Realizing the “hand-in-glove” fit of
EC-6, he applied for the grant, and on what
Torch calls a “magical day,” September
10, 2001, he was awarded the $100,000
grant to further develop and validate the
Eye-Com 6 for the defined SBIR Tasks. ECC
successfully completed the CDC SBIR Phase
I Grant within a year, demonstrating that a
wired or wireless EC-6 could clearly identify
and respond to the drowsy oculometrics of
sleep-deprived subjects with sleep apnea or
narcolepsy, and normal controls, in a simple
desktop computer drive simulator program
called Steer Clear.
In that CDC study, it was shown that the
PERCLOS measurements of sleepy subjects
tested in that 24-hour sleep deprivation
study had the same eye characteristics as
patients previously diagnosed with ADD
and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder
(ADHD). This led to Torch’s conviction that
ADD/ADHD may, in many cases, be the
“functional expression” of underlying states
of sleepiness associated with the growing
epidemic of insufficient sleep in the United
States—in both the civilian and military
worlds. According to military professionals,
long hours on duty, and missions associated
with sleep deprivation, are the rule—and
frequently the cause of irritable or aggressive
behavior, road rage, and human factorsrelated performance-vigilance failures
leading to the unwanted consequences of
friendly fire and collateral damage, Torch
says. With these considerations in mind,
the Department of Defense (USDOD) invited
the WSDC and ECC to apply for a US Armysponsored 2003 Phase I $75,000 SBIR Grant,
and as before, the two were once again
awarded.

During the Phase I study conducted in 2004,
ECC refined the EC-6 and developed Eye-Com
Eye-Seetm oculometric software that could be
used to study the eyes of drivers and pilots
in a more advanced desk-top STISIM Drive
simulator installed in the WSDC/NDC. It was
demonstrated that Eye-Seetm had the potential
of tracking more than 30 different eyelid,
eyeball, and pupil movements, including
PERCLOS, in real time as well as from
previously recorded video of an EC-6 wearer’s
eyes. During the Army Phase I study, EC-6 was
deployed within a full immersion UH-60 Black
Hawk helicopter flight simulator at Ft Rucker,
Ala, and the US Army Aeromedical Research
Laboratory Engineering Directorate approved
its use in further real and simulated helicopter
studies.
Upon completion of Phase I study, Torch, as
principal investigator, was invited to apply for
a follow-up $750,000 US Army Phase II SBIR
Grant to further develop the EC-6 as a SoldierMounted Eye-Gaze tracking technology, which
could be incorporated into glasses worn
under pull-down masks and visors, as well as
attached to night-vision scopes and goggles,
or physically incorporated into head-mounted
displays and scuba masks.
Upon receipt of the award, the WSDC
and ECC began to take center stage with
a full immersion Eye-Com Drive Simulator
within the WSDC. “I brought in a Dodge Ram

truck,” Torch says, “sliced it in half, took
out the guts, brought the two halves up in
an elevator to the seventh floor facility, put
it on a wooden frame, built a wrap-around
screen around it with three projectors, and
integrated the EC-6-Com with other biophysiological recorders, including EEG, into
the Eye-Com Truck Drive Simulator to monitor
drowsiness and effects of sleep deprivation
on patients with sleep apnea, narcolepsy,
and ADD, and normal controls with no sleep
disorder.”
During this Institutional Review Boardapproved 24- to 36-hour sleep deprivation
EC-6 Drive Simulator study, all subjects
demonstrated worsening performance
in six successive testing sessions,
administered every 6 hours, over the
36-hour sleep deprivation period. In each
of the six successive sessions, there were
progressive increases in EC-6 generated Eye
Blink Frequency, Eye Blink Duration, and
PERCLOS oculometrics, which correlated
with increasing drowsiness and microsleeps, along with decreasing attentiveness,
increased numbers of errors of omission
and commission, and slower reaction times
to stimuli, all consistent with ADD/ADHD
symptomatology. As in real life, untreated
narcoleptic subjects were the most impaired
of the four groups, also showing the worst
ADD scores.

Artistic rendition of EC-9

	

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For all groups, EC-6 drowsiness
oculometrics were linearly correlated with
progressive performance-vigilance decline as
documented by proportional increase in drive
simulator crashes, center line and road edge
excursions, and erratic braking and driving.
Circadian changes also were noted, with
“second wind” recovery on the sixth testing
session for all groups. The findings were
consistent with police-reported transportation
accident statistics and observations, where
most of the simulator accidents occurred
in the early morning hours, when driving
performance is most impaired in real world
driving. Because of its successes under the
Federal CDC and US Army’s SBIR Program,
ECC and Torch were awarded the coveted
National Tibbetts Award in 2006, with further
acclaim in the September 2006 Congressional
Record. This was followed by receipt of a
2008 Nevada Entrepreneurship Award for
Medium Sized Business.
Another EC-6 study funded by the National
Highway Traffic Safety Administration Heavy
Truck Division of the USDOT and the USDOD
included a head-to-head comparison of
the wearable EC-6’s PERCLOS-measuring
capabilities with Co-Pilot, a dashboardmounted eye-tracker. The comparative
study performed in the Eye-Com Dodge Ram
simulator conclusively demonstrated EC-6’s
superiority as an unobtrusive wearable
eye-frame, which was capable of operating
in very demanding environments, as, for
example, where the movement of the
trucker in a cab might confound a fixed,
dashboard-mounted eye-tracker as it loses
contact with the driver’s face and eyes, or
when the driver is looking away from the
dashboard-mounted camera, or wearing
obtrusive glasses causing unwanted glints,
Torch says.
One of the many innovations to come out
of the combined USDOD/USDOT-sponsored
study was a new mathematically derived
Eye-Com Composite Oculometric Fatigue
Index (COFI) and an Eye-Com COFI Safety
Response Algorithm, which could trigger

8	

The Eye-Com COFItm Safety Response Algorithm showing drive simulator accidents as a
function of Eye-Com generated PERCLOS oculometrics in subjects with OSA, narcolepsy,
and ADD and normal controls, who were tested every 6 hours over a 36-hour sleep deprivation period.

audible or tactile alarms of increasing intensity
dependent on the degree of sleepiness (eg,
mild, moderate, severe) as measured by
increasing PERCLOS and longer eye-blink
durations associated with drowsiness-impaired
driving. The Eye-Com COFI Safety Response
now has the potential to be used in the real
world to alert a sleepy operator or passengers
in the vehicle, to alert surrounding vehicles
in danger, or, for that matter, a dispatcher or
air controller at a remote monitoring site, to
prevent a fatal accident.

A Vision Takes Shape
The EC-6 has evolved into the EC-7 and
a futuristic EC-8 to be released this year for
Augmentative and Alternative Communication
(AAC) applications to help any individual
with any degree of disability, whether totally
or partially paralyzed. Making all of this
possible is EC-7 and EC-8’s newest eye-gaze
capabilities, integrating binocular Eye-Com
endo-camera eye movement with Eye-Com
exo-camera head-pose coordinates, allowing
the wearer to control a computer cursor by
“point and drag” Eye-Mouse tm as well as
purposeful eye-blink or eye-dwell functions,
which can be used in combination with
scalable “click activation” by any functional
body part (eg, finger, hand, foot, face, or
mouth, etc).
As has already been demonstrated, the
EC-7 and future HawkEye EC-8 model,
designed to help ALS-afflicted individuals

such as Professor Stephen Hawking, will
allow users to virtually control any off-theshelf or specially designed AAC software
programs using typing, text, and speech
generating keyboards, and an infinite number
of software programs.
“Perhaps by reversing the sleep deprivation
epidemic that is universal in scope,” Torch says,
“we can reverse the unnecessary dependence
on stimulants and sleep medications and also
drastically reduce the number of near-fatal
accidents—the cause of millions of disabling
injuries world-wide.”
If you or your company is interested in
integrating the Eye-Com technology in your
own research applications, or have interest
in becoming a beta test site for the new
Eye-Com or Sleep Manager technologies,
please contact Eye-Com Corporation or
William Torch at (775) 329-2006. For more
information, please visit the ECC Web site:
www.eyecomworld.com.

Tina Page is a freelance writer based
in Lomita, Calif. She can be reached at
sleepeditor@allied360.com.

William Torch, MD
Washoe Sleep Disorders Center
Renown Center for Advanced Medicine - Building C
75 Pringle Way # 701
Reno, NV 89502
775.329.4060

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BEST OF 2012
sleep doctors
Haeger, Eric, MD

Central Washington Sleep Diagnostic
Center
Wenatchee, Wash
509.663.1578
www.cwsleepcenter.com

Hales, J.D., DO

Sleep Solutions of New Iberia
New Iberia, La
337.606.0041
www.sleepsolutionsofnewiberia.com

Hare, Kelly, FNP

Pulmonary Associates of Kingsport
Kingsport, Tenn
423.247.9075
www.pak-kpt.com

Haynes, J. Brevard, MD

Saint Thomas Health Services Center
for Sleep
Nashville, Tenn
615.284.7533
www.tncenterforsleep.com

Hegde, Korgi V., MD
Clayton Sleep Institute
St Louis, Mo
314.645.5855
www.claytonsleep.com

Hertz, Gila, PhD

Huntington Medical Group Sleep
Disorders Center
Huntington Station, NY
631.425.3895
www.hmgpc.com

Horowitz, Sandra, MD
Sleep HealthCenters
Framingham, Mass
508.270.6020
www.sleephealth.com

Howell, Michael, MD

BEST of

2012
Ibrahimbacha, Ahmad, MD

Makki, Hassan, MD

Ingmundson, Paul, PhD

Malhotra, Raman, MD

SkyRidge Medical Center
See
Cleveland, Tenn
page 26
423.476.2212	
www.skyridgemedicalcenter.net
South Texas VA Health Care System
San Antonio, Tex
210.617.5300
www.southtexas.va.gov

Janata, Kelli Rae, DO

Banner Health-North Colorado
Medical Center
Greeley, Colo
970.350.6587
www.bannerhealth.com

Kaelin, Thomas, Jr, DO

South Carolina Sleep Medicine, LLC
Summerville, SC
843.871.4006
www.scsleepmedicine.com

Kaimal, Janardana, MD

Sleep Disorder Center of Louisiana
Lake Charles, La
877.597.7378
www.sleepdisordercenterofla.com

Koops, Maureen, MD

South Texas VA Health Care System
San Antonio, Tex
210.617.5300
www.southtexas.va.gov

Kravitz, Richard, MD

Duke University Medical Center,
Children’s Health Center
Durham, NC
888.275.3853
www.dukehealth.org

Huang, David Y., MD

Livornese, Douglas, MD, FACP,
FCCP, FAASM

Hudson, John Douglas, MD
Sleep Medicine Consultants
Austin, Tex
512.420.9900
www.sleepdoc.net

Hudson, John Douglas, MD
The Sleep Center of Austin
Austin, Tex
512.697.9896
www.thesleepcenteraustin.com

See
page 18

Lombardo, Gerard, MD

Nocturnal Sleep Diagnostics, LLC
New York, NY
718.803.7222

Lynch, Elizabeth A., MD

Sleep Institute of New England
Kingston, NH
877.550.7463
www.sleepne.com

Pascual, Frederick, MD
The Everett Clinic
Everett, Wash
800.533.7035
www.everettclinic.com

Patel, Anit B., MD

REM Sleep Diagnostics
Vacaville, Calif
707.469.8400
www.mysleepscore.com

Perkin, Ronald M., MD
Vidant Medical Center
Greenville, NC
252.847.4100
www.vidanthealth.com

McArdle, Robert, DO

Chest Medicine Associates
South Portland, Me
207.828.1122
www.cmamaine.com

Polsky, Michael, MD

Northern Colorado Pulmonary
Consultants PC
Fort Collins, Colo
970.224.9102
www.ncpcpulmonary.com

Total Lung Care
Richmond, Ky
859.623.8981

Comfort Sleep
Neptune City, NJ
732.455.3030	
www.comfortsleep.net

Saint Louis University School of
Medicine
St Louis, Mo
314.977.9870
www.slu.edu

Milchak, Richard, MD

Joshi, Rajan, MD

Fairview Sleep Centers, University of
Minnesota Medical Center-Fairview
Minneapolis, Minn
800.824.1953
www.fairview.org
Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare
Sleep Center
Tallahassee, Fla
850.431.4400
www.tmh.org

DMC Sinai-Grace Sleep Disorders
Center
Detroit, Mich
313.966.4800
www.sinaigrace.org

Milstone, Aaron, MD

Williamson Pulmonary and Sleep
Medicine
Franklin, Tenn
615.790.4159
www.wpsmed.com

Mostafavi, Said K., MD

Advanced Sleep Medicine Services
Los Angeles, Calif
877.775.3377
www.sleepdr.com

Moufarrej, Nabil A., MD
The Sleep Clinic
Shreveport, La
318.797.1585
sleepcliniconline.net

Nicholson, Dennis H., MD

Pomona Valley Hospital Adult and
Children’s Sleep Disorders Center
Claremont, Calif
909.865.9152
www.pvhmc.org

Panossian, David H., MD

Klamath Sleep Medicine Center
Klamath Falls, Ore
541.885.2201
www.klamathsleepmedicinecenter.com

Paranjothi, Subramanian, MD
Mercy Hospital-St. Louis
St Louis, Mo
314.251.6000
www.mercy.net

Paruthi, Shalini, MD

SSM Cardinal Glennon Children’s
Medical Center
St Louis, Mo
314.577.5600
www.cardinalglennon.com

Pulmonary Associates of Richmond
Sleep Disorders Center
Richmond, Va
804.320.4243
www.paraccess.com

Potts, Richard, DO

St. Vincent Regional - Sleep Disorder
Center
Green Bay, Wis
920.431.3041
www.stvincenthospital.org

Puri, Amitab, MD

Pima Lung & Sleep, PC
Tucson, Ariz
520.229.8878
www.pimalung.com

Razavi, Mehrdad, MD

Advanced Sleep Diagnostics
Red Bluff, Calif
530.242.9273
www.reddingsleepdisorders.com

Reda, Fouad, MD

St. Louis University School of
Medicine
St. Louis, Mo
314.977.9870
www.slu.edu

Reid, Jeffrey, MD

Tanner Center for Sleep Disorders
Carrollton, Ga
770.836.9146
www.tanner.org

Ringler, Jack, MD

Sleep Disorders Center at Berkshire
Medical Center
Pittsfield, Mass
413.447.2000
www.berkshirehealthsystems.com

Rinn, Andrea, DO

United Sleep Medicine Centers
Charlotte, NC
888.876.0129
www.unitedsleepmedicine.com
Continued on page 28

	

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Prabhat Soni, MD, FCCP, DABSM

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Sleeping Giants
by Renee Diiulio

Prabhat Soni, MD, FCCP, DABSM, tackles
issues of awareness and screening in
sleep medicine in the United States and
India.
Sleep physicians like Prabhat Soni, MD,
FCCP, DABSM, a top doctor in sleep medicine
today, are well aware of the importance of
sleep. “Poor sleep can lead to a higher risk
of disease, including diabetes, high blood
pressure, and obesity,” Soni emphasizes
whenever asked. Unfortunately, however,
many primary care physicians and even more
patients are unaware of the many health
problems associated with poor sleep—and
may not even think to ask.
“Patients don’t know about sleep apnea,
and if they do know about it, they don’t
want to go to the doctor. But even if they
do go to the doctor, many primary care
physicians are not aware of the seriousness
of sleep apnea,” Soni says.
Soni has made it a mission to turn
this situation around, not only here in
the United States, but also in his native
country of India. Recognition for his work
has landed him among Sleep Review’s
honorees 2 years in a row and garnered
accolades from the NRI (Non-Resident
Indian) Society of India. On a recent trip to
India, Soni was honored by the NRI Welfare
Society of India with a Hind Ratan Award
and NRI of the Year 2012.
The attention is useful in generating and
maintaining momentum for his mission. On
that same trip, while in New Delhi, Soni’s
hometown (and the country’s capital), he
met with the core team of President Smt
Pratibha Devisingh Patil to discuss the issues
surrounding sleep and how to expand the

10	

field of sleep medicine within the country.
His work and interviews were aired during
Indian news programs highlighting his efforts
to diminish the impact of sleep disorders;
additional audiences were captured with
online versions.
Soni is driven to help others by a desire
that started close to home, with a family
history suffering its own impact from sleep
disorders. His grandfather had multiple
health problems, which Soni now believes
were related to sleep apnea. “He snored
so much my grandmother would sleep in
another room,” Soni recalls. But no one
associated his sleep problems with his
hypertension, diabetes, or strokes.
The connection between sleep and
mortality was more evident for another
family member who fell asleep behind the
wheel and crashed. The accident occurred
while Soni was studying medicine, and he
gravitated to the still growing field.
Today, Soni loses sleep trying to fix the
slumber of others. His methods reflect
some growing trends in the industry (eg,
one-stop shopping and a modernized sleep
lab) as well as new directions (a broader
focus and team approach). And his efforts
spare no one: whether a patient is rich or
poor in New York City or New Delhi, Soni
will find a way to get everybody a good
night’s sleep.

Working Toward a Fifth Board
Soni has been practicing medicine in the
United States for more than 20 years. After
obtaining his MD from Sardar Patel Medical
College in Bikaner, India, he completed his
board certifications in chest and TB at the VP
Chest Institute and in diagnostic radiology at
Safdarjung Hospital in New Delhi.
He relocated to New York in 1989,
completing residencies in pediatrics/medicine
at Lincoln Medical Center in the Bronx and
internal medicine at Kingsbrook Jewish
Medical Center in Brooklyn. Fellowships
followed: one in pulmonary medicine at
Cabrini Medical Center in New York and
one in critical care medicine at Maimonides
Medical Center in Brooklyn.
Today, he is quadruple board certified by
the American Board of Internal Medicine
in sleep, pulmonary, critical care, and
internal medicine and is working toward
a fifth board certification in bariatrics. He
expects to take the exam in November
and is currently completing a fellowship in
bariatric medicine. His goal is to expand his
understanding regarding obesity and sleep
apnea.
Just as he has multiple boards, Soni
also has multiple roles. He is chief of the
pulmonary department and co-chair of the
intensive care unit at New York Community
Hospital (NYCH) of Brooklyn; he is affiliated

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BEST of

2012
with Beth Israel Medical Center in New York
City and New York Methodist Hospital in
Brooklyn; and he is an assistant clinical
professor at Weill Cornell Medical College
in New York. He directs four sleep centers,
including his own sleep and pulmonary
practice, which is located just outside of
NYCH of Brooklyn and has been in business
since 2000.

create a plan that is effective for the patient
from all perspectives: diagnosis, compliance,
and budget. For instance, when appropriate,
dental appliances are prescribed and made.
Soni also has created a weekly insomnia
clinic that helps to target this large but niche
population, while weight loss programs have
been developed to help obese patients slim
down.

Expanding Practice Parameters

Developing Expertise
in Bariatrics

In the past year, Soni has not just
expanded the number of sleep clinics he
manages but also the scope of his practice.
A main focus remains on drowsy drivers, but
he has extended his services to the pediatric
patient population, typically 8 years of age
and older. “A lot of pediatric sleep apnea
is related to large tonsils, and my excellent
ENT team knows how to take good care of
them,” Soni says.
In fact, Soni has a multidisciplinary
team he can call on whenever a specific
need arises. The group includes an ENT, a
bariatric surgeon, cardiologist, neurologist,
pediatrician, psychiatrist, sleep dentist,
translators (Chinese, Hindi, Spanish, and
Russian), and a psychologist, who can offer
cognitive behavioral therapy. “They are all
available if somebody has a problem, so we
can address the issue right away,” Soni says,
noting each one is an expert in their field.
If, however, the team lacks a certain
expertise, Soni’s clinic is located next to
NYCH of Brooklyn with its wealth of
resources nearby. Of course, Soni’s four
board certifications make him a unique asset
as well. “In the management of sleep apnea,
comprehensive and total care is important.
When somebody comes in with sleep apnea,
I look at everything from head to toe,” Soni
says.
Soni prefers to supervise patients himself
when possible and typically stops by nightly
during sleep studies after finishing up at
the hospital. “If I can find the problem right
then, we can begin treatment sooner,” Soni
says.
State-of-the-art equipment helps to
diagnose sleep disorders, including
employing home-testing devices. Once
a patient is diagnosed, Soni will work to

disorders has grown with his knowledge
of bariatric medicine. His Web site (www.
sleeptobeslim.com) notes that patients
enjoying fewer than 10 hours of restorative,
deep sleep a week could see a weight gain of
almost 20 pounds over the course of a year.
To properly diagnose overweight patients,
Soni will review diet and medications as
well as check thyroid function, endocrine
function, and metabolic rate along with the
sleep study.
Treatment can include a medically
supervised weight loss program that will

Soni’s focus on sleep-related bariatric

	

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[facing sleep medicine today] is that sleep
apnea is becoming epidemic because of the
increase in obesity,” Soni says.

Creating Awareness About
Sleep

be backed by a guarantee. Pending patient
preferences, components can include
meal supplements, replacements, and/or
diet regimens. Patients who follow their
programs and complete their check-ins
(where they meet with a bariatric specialist
on the team) will have their money refunded
if they do not lose weight within the first 6
months.
Soni feels the growing numbers of
obese people are contributing to the rising
incidence of sleep apnea. He is currently
undertaking a 6-month study that will look
at the relationship between metabolic
syndrome and sleep in morbidly obese
patients. “One of the biggest challenges

12	

One solution, he strongly believes, is
awareness, so Soni reaches out on multiple
levels.
He conducts seminars regularly within the
community, for both primary care physicians
and patients. His PowerPoint presentation
has seen the insides of physician offices,
community centers, and churches.
Soni continues to run newspaper and
television advertisements, although he is
currently updating his on-air commercials.
His shocking drowsy driver commercial has
run its course. In 2011, he ran it just twice a
month. The new version will be modified to
allow it to run during daytime hours, while
two new commercials with different angles
will be added to the roster.
A new Web site showcases Soni’s embrace
of bariatric medicine: www.sleeptobeslim.
com blends obesity concerns with education
on sleep disorders in general. Topics include
sleep disorders (including sleep apnea) and
their impact along with statistics and tips.
Videos and bullet points deliver short but
effective messages.
The home page features a questionnaire
designed to quickly identify whether
a person may have a sleep disorder; the
television commercials and newspaper
advertisements also provide a quick quiz and
call to action. Internet responses or phone
queries receive an immediate follow-up from
Soni or a member of his team.
The goal is to determine who is at high
risk for a sleep disorder and then to properly
evaluate those patients who fall into
this category. “We can quickly set up an
appointment for a sleep screening. If it’s
mild, they can be home tested. If it seems
more serious, they can come into the sleep
clinic. Awareness and screening—these two
things are important right now,” Soni says.

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BEST of

2012

Taking the Message Abroad
Awareness and screening are also two
issues Soni would like to tackle in his native
India. The population in the United States
numbers more than 313 million people;
Soni estimates 50 to 70 million are affected
by a sleep disorder. More than one sleep
association has been established, including
the American Academy of Sleep Medicine
(AASM), founded in 1975 (as the Association
of Sleep Disorder Centers).
Compare these numbers to India, where
the population numbers more than 1 billion.
Although no clear statistics exist on the
prevalence of sleep disorders in the country,
a similar ratio would indicate 159 to 224
million people could be impacted. Today,
however, this population is not likely to be
treated.
Sleep medicine is still relatively new to
the nation. Two of the field’s prominent
associations were founded in the 1990s;
the Indian Sleep Disorders Association
(established in 1995) boasts more than
200 members, a healthy number for a new
organization but allowing room for growth.
During his meeting with the Indian
president’s team, Soni discussed how the
growing sleep epidemic, which is aggravated
by obesity, comes at a high economic cost
and with serious public health concerns.

“Diagnosing and treating sleep problems
will save money and lives and create a huge
market for new jobs in India,” Soni says.
Soni aims to increase awareness in the
Indian patient population and medical
community through education, with a focus
on distance learning for physicians and
technicians. Soni believes the method can be
designed to work internationally as well as
domestically. He has opened a school, called
New York Sleep School International, to
offer both Internet education and hands-on
training to help sleep professionals improve
their skills.
The school is expected to begin A-STEP
classes in the second quarter of 2012 (likely
April). Members of the faculty include
Satyasagar Morisetty, MD, board certified
in sleep medicine, and Robby Williams, RRT,
RPSGT. Soni’s wife, Rita Carpenter Soni,
PhD, RPSGT, who is currently finishing a
post-master certification in sleep disorders
at the University of Massachusetts Boston, is
the school’s director.
The institution will train overseas students
on sleep technology, including physicians
who want to learn the specialty. “Students
can come to New York for 2 to 6 weeks to
get an introduction and expert hands-on
sleep tech experience through webinars,
books, and videos,” Soni says. He believes

the growing knowledge base in sleep
technology along with its implementation
in the screening, diagnosis, and treatment
of patients not only will improve patient
health but also will create a new job
market. “I prepared an abstract for the
President of India on the potential that the
sleep medicine market has to help reduce
unemployment while improving population
health,” Soni says.
It answered questions the average patient
wouldn’t think to ask and helped to deliver
a positive message regarding the importance
of sleep. The attention is welcome for a
physician dedicated to increasing awareness
about a little understood field that matters
to everyone, everywhere.
Renee Diiulio is a freelance writer based in
Manhattan Beach, Calif. She can be reached
at sleepeditor@allied360.com.

Prabhat Soni, MD, FCCP, DABSM
Sleep & Weight Loss Institute
2519 Avenue O
Brooklyn, NY 11210
718.787.1900
www.SleepToBeSlim.com

	

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Academic Profile: East Carolina University

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The Team Approach
By Greg Thompson

Under the leadership of Sunil Sharma, MD,
DABSM, the East Carolina University Sleep
Disorders and Research Center is taking a
truly multidisciplinary approach to sleep
disorder treatment.
Patient demand is sky high these days at the
East Carolina University (ECU) Sleep Disorders and
Research Center, Greenville, NC. Thanks to the
facility’s growing reputation for excellence, much
of it fueled by the leadership of Sunil Sharma, MD,
DABSM, director of the center, existing space will be
used for two additional beds.
Sleep apnea sufferers are hearing about the center
primarily due to a steady stream of enthusiastic
area physicians who appreciate Sharma’s efforts to
create a state-of-the-art sleep center that provides
comprehensive care in all aspects of sleep medicine.
Considering that the center opened its doors just
a little more than 3 years ago, the rise has been
consistently fast with no signs of slowing down.
With the new beds still not quite in use as of press
time, the existing six-bed, full-service unit is located
on the first floor of the new ECU Moye Building. The
sleep center is equipped with advanced in-house
diagnostic and home monitoring devices (Cadwell
Laboratories Inc). A multidisciplinary team composed
of sleep physicians from various disciplines manages
all types of sleep disorders.
As part of the Brody School of Medicine, the
center serves as a training site for medical staff
interested in sleep disorders. The list of specialties
seems to grow each year as medical professionals
discover ever more maladies that are made worse—
or perhaps even caused by—sleep apnea. “We
are pushing the envelope in all directions of sleep
medicine, which I think should be the true nature
of academic sleep medicine,” says Sharma, also
director of the Vidant Sleep Center. “We don’t focus
on just one agenda, and we don’t just focus on the

14	

elements that are paying. We are educating and
training young doctors and technicians to become
certified at national levels, and doing research.”
As one example of that research, Sharma and his
team recently published that the prevalence of sleep
disorders is high in patients undergoing cardiac
rehab. “And that is important because the burden
of a comorbid condition like OSA may slow down
recovery during rehabilitation,” he says. “Our sleep
center program is among the first to find out and
establish that there is lung inflammation involved in
patients who have sleep-disordered breathing. This
has never been reported in the past.”
Yet another study with Medical University of
South Carolina, Charleston, examined whether
those who have sleep apnea have more blockages
in their coronary arteries, and thus more heart
disease. “We found these patients had seven times
higher odds of having a blood vessel blockage (soft
plaque) in the heart as compared to people who
did not have sleep apnea,” Sharma says. “This has
not been shown before. This is the type of original
research that helps us understand the impact of
sleep apnea on our community.”
According to Sharma, who also serves as an
assistant professor of medicine at the Brody School
of Medicine, the center’s overarching mission is
clinical, research, teaching, and training. “A vast
majority of private sleep disorders centers are
clinically oriented,” he says. “As an academic
center, our mission is above and beyond to educate
our entire community about sleep, and train
young physicians and sleep technologists about
sleep medicine and continue to push the limits of
understanding sleep disorders and their impact on

our society. We have a training school for sleep
technicians in eastern North Carolina, and our sleep
disorder center is a training ground for those sleep
technicians before they finish their training. We
are involved in a much broader manner than just
patient care.”
The ever-widening tentacles of sleep apnea can
be seen at ECU’s sleep clinic among people who
have high blood pressure, diabetes, and congestive
heart failure and have been referred due to daytime
sleepiness. One such patient came to Sharma after
several years of symptoms.
The man’s physicians attributed his symptoms
to underlying heart failure, but a chicken-or-egg
scenario increasingly emerges where apnea may
worsen, or even cause, many ailments. “In this
patient, we had severe sleep apnea,” Sharma says.
“It’s remarkable that these patients have dramatic
improvement in a matter of months after putting
them on treatment. Their blood pressure gets
controlled, heart failure symptoms resolve, and
daytime tiredness resolves.”

Problems Down South
In eastern North Carolina, stroke is the fourth
leading cause of death. It’s part of a “stroke belt”
that also includes a high burden of congestive heart
failure, hypertension, and diabetes in eastern North
Carolina—and in much of the South.
Sleep disorders are strongly associated with these
comorbidities, and ECU’s multidisciplinary sleep
center is an increasingly important tool in the fight
against cardiovascular disease. “Sleep apnea could
very well be the driving engine for many of these
cardiovascular disorders,” Sharma muses. “We

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don’t know now because this sector of medicine is
still relatively new. Fixing sleep-disordered breathing
may slow down the progress of many of these other
cardiovascular diseases—and in the process may
improve survival.”

Spreading the Word
Tracking down Sunil Sharma, MD, DABSM,
director, East Carolina University Sleep
Disorders Center, on an average day is no
easy task. Factor in the extra duties of Sleep
Awareness Week, plus preparations for a
day-long symposium, and it becomes almost
impossible.
The hours
are long, but
Sharma has
a passion
that he is
determined
to bring to
the center,
and by
extension to
patients. In
recognition
of ECU’s
outstanding results, the Sleep Disorders and
Research Center recently received program
accreditation from the American Academy of
Sleep Medicine (AASM).
At press time, Sharma’s symposium at
the Hilton Hotel in Greenville, NC, will be
over, and hundreds will be wiser. After a
wide range of sleep, pulmonary, and critical
care programs, attendees learned just how
far sleep has penetrated into the general
medical realm.
Offered by the Division of Pulmonary,
Critical Care and Sleep Medicine, the
conference provided the most current,
practical, and concise information available
on recent advances in clinical sleep and
pulmonary medicine.
Sharma and his colleagues offered lectures
and discussion periods for both formal
and informal exchanges between faculty
and participants. Targeted for internists,
family medicine and emergency medicine
physicians, PAs, and NPs providing primary
care management, those who completed
the course got continuing education credits
and knowledge of strategies to identify sleep
disorders.
­—G.T.

attention deficit may yet be seeing the effects of
sleep apnea. “In adults, you tend to have sleepiness
during the day,” Sharma says. “In children, they can
get hyper-aroused and lose focus. Falling grades
could be a sign of underlying sleep disorders.
Involving pediatricians improves the outreach of
sleep into the world of children, which is usually
swept under the carpet.”
Relying on durable medical equipment (DME)
companies can be a source of anxiety for many
sleep physicians who fear the level of education
provided and service may not be adequate. Sharma
aims to deal with this familiar problem by asking
DME providers to come to his center for setups and
education. It may sound like a tall order, but many
providers are willing.
“Compliance is an important quality parameter,
and is ultimately a reflection of the sleep disorders
center,” Sharma says. “Now we are setting
standards so we know what they are doing and
what kind of education and training they are giving.
We plan to have them come to the clinic to set
those patients up so we can supervise. The DME is
still making the sale, but the whole quality aspect
is better controlled. It’s a bit of a pain for the DME
company, but they are getting more accepting.”
The center is truly the one place to be, and
Sharma believes the one-roof ethic will be a
nationwide trend. In addition to a patient sleep
mecca of sorts, ECU’s center is a training ground
for medical students (Brody School of Medicine),
residents, fellows, and students of the Pitt County
polysomnography school in Greenville, NC. “Many
of these bright students have stayed back to serve
the community,” Sharma says. “The sleep center
serves 29 counties, and is the largest academic
center in eastern North Carolina. I am helped in this
venture by an extremely dedicated and passionate
faculty and staff who push the boundaries of
excellence every day.”

As director, Sharma embraces community
involvement through his yearly symposium (see
sidebar) and multiple talks to diabetic groups and
heart health forums. With the help of three boardcertified pulmonary (and sleep boarded) physicians,
one pediatric (sleep board certified) physician,
and three neurology-based (sleep board certified)
physicians, he uses the multidisciplinary approach to
educate patients and physicians alike.
He is currently working on his vision of a
multidisciplinary team providing care under one
roof, an approach that aims to step away from
the current reality of fragmented care. “Different
specialties tend to operate as independent silos,
but the best care will come together when the
patient can get all his sleep care under one
roof,” Sharma says. “The multidisciplinary
approach involves several different specialties—
pulmonologist, psychologist/psychiatrist, dentist,
neurologist, and ENT physician. This is even more
true as more treatment options from surgery to
dental devices are available to the patient. If they
are not in close proximity with us, or working with
us, care can get disrupted.”

CPAP and Oral Appliances (Multifaceted Management of SleepDisordered Breathing)
When ECU opened its first school of dentistry last
year, Sharma took his multidisciplinary approach to
the burgeoning field of dental sleep medicine. Unlike
more established dental schools around the country,
ECU’s students will not be ignoring sleep medicine.
Refusing to indulge in rigid therapy preferences,
Sharma believes oral appliances can definitely be
beneficial for those who do not tolerate conventional
CPAP therapy. “I am engaging our dentists to
our sleep disorders center,” Sharma enthuses. “I
am working closely with the faculty at the dental
school of medicine to recruit dentists to come over
and treat patients who have failed conventional
treatment. This is a new opportunity to engage
dentists from the beginning. The dental school
faculty is arranging educational sessions and grand
rounds and coordinating activities with the sleep
disorders center. As director for sleep medicine, my
job is to engage these different specialties. In the
last year, I have engaged most of these specialties
as we move toward a one-roof model.”
In addition to ENTs, pulmonologists, cardiologists,
and now dentists, pediatricians are part of the mix
at ECU. Indeed, teachers who identify students with

Greg Thompson is a contributing writer for Sleep
Review. The author can be reached at sleepeditor@
allied360.com.

Sunil Sharma, MD, DABSM, ABIM
Director, ECU Sleep Disorders Center
East Carolina University/Brody School of Medicine
521-A Moye Boulevard
Greenville, NC 27834
252.744.4653
www.ecu.edu

	

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Mansoor Ahmed, MD, FCCP, FABSM

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The Broad Approach:
Patient Care,
Education, Research
By Alison Werner

The Cleveland Sleep Centers: Improving sleep
health care from every angle
In 1998, Mansoor Ahmed, MD, FCCP, FABSM
founded the Cleveland Sleep Centers, a coordinated
network of community-based sleep programs, to
provide clinical care and promote sleep education
and research in the field of sleep medicine. The Sleep
Centers also developed a collaborative sleep program
with University Hospitals system at Bedford and
Lutheran Hospital (Cleveland Clinic Health System).
“We are the only health care entity in the history
of Cleveland that enjoys a true bilateral relationship
with the two competing academic giants,” quipped
Ahmed.
In the 1990s, sleep medicine was primarily
confined to the large academic and teaching
hospitals. There were virtually no community-based
sleep health care programs and education initiatives
in the Greater Cleveland Metropolitan Area. Having
served on the faculty of medicine at Case Western
Reserve University, Ahmed felt that the rapid
developments in sleep medicine that were taking
place within academia were not being translated in
a timely fashion into community practices.
“How is an academic center defined? Look at the
Mayo Clinic. They have three levels: patient care,
education, and research,” Ahmed says. The sleep
program at Cleveland Sleep Centers, developed by
Ahmed and his team, was modeled on these best
academic attributes.

Comprehensive Care
As Ahmed points out, sleep medicine is a true
multidisciplinary specialty. There is hardly any
medical, mental, or psychiatric condition that doesn’t
affect sleep and there is hardly any system physiology
that is not affected by sleep disorders.
“Improving sleep health is not all about sleep apnea
and CPAP,” says Ahmed. “Most of the patients do

16	

not present with a single disease process. You can’t
just give them CPAP or an insomnia pill and be done.
A large number of patients have a complex sleep
pathology that requires an integrative approach.”
To effectively treat a patient, and improve
sleep health, sleep professionals need to look at
underlying or comorbid conditions, Ahmed says.
From the psychological factors—including mood
disorders like bipolar disorder and depression—to
medical conditions like chronic fibromyalgia and
Alzheimer’s disease: all these conditions have
profound implications for sleep.
“In order to practice sleep medicine in a real
sense, you have to look at it more broadly,” says
Ahmed, who has been frustrated by the focus on
sleep apnea as the defining condition of sleep
medicine in recent years—a focus that has led some
sleep centers to ignore other health issues, and, thus,
prevented patients from getting a good night’s sleep.
“Even sleep apnea is not a homogenous disorder. It
requires more in-depth pathophysiological analysis
and subsequent therapeutic interventions.”
The Cleveland Sleep Centers, which have
been recognized by the American Association for
Respiratory Care as one of the top three community
sleep centers in the United States, make it their
mission to always look at the whole patient and to
integrate disciplines outside of sleep medicine into
patient care to most effectively treat the patient.
That includes a staff orthodontist consultant and
other trained dentists in the community who can
work with patients for whom CPAP has failed and
who would be better treated with an oral appliance,

and close working relationships with area psychiatric
specialists who may need to be brought in to discuss
any underlying psychiatric conditions affecting a
patient’s sleep. According to Ahmed, this in-depth,
integrative approach, which is often found in
academic-based sleep centers, was missing at the
community level when he first opened the Cleveland
Sleep Centers’ doors.
“After my transition from a teaching hospital to a
community practice, my challenge was to integrate
other disciplines to help these patients who have
multiple pathologies for their sleep disturbances.
An integrated approach wasn’t there, and it’s still
largely not there. There are hardly any sleep centers
at the community level, where other disciplines have
been integrated to evaluate and manage patients,”
Ahmed says. “This [approach] is specific to our
program.”
While the facility’s bedrooms feature home-like
décor, including paintings, decorative window
treatments, and high-quality mattresses, and are
designed for patient comfort, the Cleveland Sleep
Centers pride themselves on being more than just
nice labs. It is a facility that makes patient comfort,
treatment compliance, and long-term patient health
equally important elements.
“What is the point of having a beautiful sleep
center, or how many studies a center is performing,
when at the end of the day, the outcomes of these
patients are terrible because people are not using
their treatment,” says Ahmed.
As is the case with many other medical disciplines,
compliance is also a problem in sleep medicine.

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Yet, unlike most other disciplines, patient follow-up
for patients suffering from sleep-related problems
is not always a consistent component of patient
care. The Cleveland Sleep Centers, however, have
made compliance and patient follow-up a part of
their clinical protocol. The facility has a respiratory
therapist on staff who is specialized in sleep and
who works with patients following diagnosis to not
only make sure that their mask fits, but that they are
educated about their disorder and the risks of not
following through with treatment. The sleep staff
even makes a point of including a patient’s spouse
in this education to further stress the importance of
CPAP compliance. Many sleep disorders, including
sleep apnea, are chronic conditions like hypertension
or diabetes that don’t disappear following diagnosis.
They require follow-up and every effort to encourage
and improve patient compliance with treatment.
“Just like with someone with a heart condition,
you don’t give them Lipitor and then say, ‘Goodbye.
You’re done,’” Ahmed points out. “[Sleep patients]
are not completely done after you have made the
diagnosis and given them CPAP.” The Cleveland
Sleep Centers maintain regular contact with patients,
typically seeing CPAP patients for a follow-up visit
6 weeks after their titration study and compliant
patients at least every 6 months thereafter.

Awareness through Education
But the reality is that this attention to
comprehensive patient care can be effective only if
people are aware of the effects of sleep disorders
on general health. Sleep disorders often receive
short shrift outside the sleep community, making
diagnosis and treatment, and, more importantly,
better health elusive for many patients. As Ahmed
puts it, the impact of sleep disorders on overall
health and their role in other conditions often are
not appreciated by both the medical community and
the general public. This, in large part, stems from a
lack of education. Since their inception, Cleveland
Sleep Centers have seen themselves as first and
foremost a community-based program, and have
made public and physician education beyond their
doors a fundamental component of their patient care
and commitment to sleep health.
At the general public level, the staff has
undertaken a robust public education program aimed
at improving the understanding of sleep health in
the community, in a variety of settings, including
presentations on insomnia to nursing homes and
assisted living facilities, and on shift work to nursing

and police departments and major corporations,
such as Goodyear Tire and Nestlé. In addition, the
Centers have launched various educational initiatives
aimed at the Hispanic community in Cleveland, a
segment of the population with a higher prevalence
of sleep apnea, hypertension, and diabetes. Efforts
have included training Spanish-speaking interpreters
and translation of patient literature into Spanish.
Within the medical community, Cleveland Sleep
Centers make an effort to share their knowledge
and keep non-sleep medicine specialists, especially
referring physicians, up-to-date on the current
research trends in sleep.
“Within academia, we have great research going
on—for example, in narcolepsy at Stanford. But the
knowledge being put out by those academic centers
does not translate into the community practices in a
timely fashion. It takes years and years before [nonsleep specialists] start to realize what is going on at
the academic level,” Ahmed says. He adds that for
many physicians practicing at the community level
today, there was no sleep curriculum during their
education 5 to 10 years ago. This has led to situations
where non-sleep specialists often underestimate or
overlook the impact of sleep on a patient’s underlying
disease process. For example, Ahmed points out,
rheumatologists and pain specialists often don’t
appreciate the negative impact pain and chronic
fibromyalgia can have on a patient’s sleep. If a
patient’s sleep problems are not addressed, neither
condition will improve. This knowledge vacuum keeps
patients from receiving effective care. Education
programs can improve this situation.
“If we don’t improve the knowledge of the
physicians in the community, we won’t be able to
serve the bigger picture of sleep medicine and meet
the needs of the large number of patients who are
served within communities outside academic walls.
So we focus on education,” says Ahmed, adding
that Cleveland Sleep Centers have put on hundreds
of sleep symposiums, roundtable meetings, and
conferences in their 14-year history to better educate
community physicians. In addition, Ahmed and his
staff invite primary care physicians to come and work
with them for a half day as part of a preceptorship
program so they can get a better feel for what sleep
medicine is all about, why it is important, and better
serve the needs of their own communities when they
return home.
And the Cleveland Sleep Centers’ educational
efforts aren’t limited to the local community. As a
former chair of the international affairs committee for

the AASM, Ahmed and his colleagues developed a
6-week mini-fellowship sleep training program that
invites physicians from around the world to spend time
training at Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania,
Stanford University, the Cleveland Clinic, and the
Mayo Clinic. In addition, Ahmed and his staff welcome
an international fellow to spend time at the Cleveland
Sleep Centers to see how their facility works and to
learn more about sleep medicine. The goal, Ahmed
says, is for these fellows to take their new knowledge
back to their home countries and start similar sleep
programs there. For more direct impact, Ahmed, who
is currently serving as an honorary advisor to India’s
King George Medical College as they develop their
own sleep program, hopes to soon take his team to
that country to help the medical college establish an
integrated program modeled after the Cleveland Sleep
Centers. The Centers take pride in the fact that the
first sleep program in one of the oldest cities in the
world—Aleppo, Syria—was started by a fellow who
received his training at the center.

Research and Development
But as important as educating the community
is, the staff at the Cleveland Sleep Centers also
recognize that they need to educate themselves
to best serve the sleep patients and the larger
community. To do this, Ahmed and his staff stay
actively involved in research and development in the
sleep field. Through the Cleveland Sleep Research
Center, an affiliate of Cleveland Sleep Centers, they
participate in a number of short- and long-term
research studies, including those looking at restless
leg syndrome, shift work, insomnia in children with
attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and sleep
disturbances in fibromyalgia. Some of these research
projects are funded by investigator-initiated grants.
Throughout their work, the Cleveland Sleep
Centers maintain a commitment to excellence and
to serving the community. In doing so, they hope to
serve as a model for other sleep centers everywhere
and to bring their brand of academic sleep care to
everyone in the community.
Alison Werner is associate editor of Sleep Review. She
can be reached at sleepeditor@allied360.com.

Cleveland Sleep Centers
17900 Jefferson Park Road, Suite 102
Middleburg Heights, OH 44130
440.243.8044
www.clevelandsleeps.com

	

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Douglas Livornese, MD, FACP, FCCP, FAASM

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Continuity of Care
By Tina Page

Douglas Livornese, MD, FACP, FCCP, FAASM,
designed a resourceful CPAP compliance
program that makes it difficult for patients
not to adhere with therapy.
Sleep medicine fascinated Douglas Livornese,
MD, FACP, FCCP, FAASM, from the very start
of his medical career. But in his words, the path
to becoming the director of the comprehensive
sleep disorder center, Comfort Sleep, is a
“backwards story.”
“When I was in high school, I started snow
skiing, and I hated waiting in line at the lifts,”
Livornese says. “Then I saw these people skiing
by and getting right on the lifts and I said, ‘Who
are those people?’”
After discovering that ski patrolmen do
not need to wait in line at the lifts, Livornese
became an emergency medical technician
while still in high school in hopes of someday
becoming a ski patrolman.
“And it kind of snowballed from there,”
Livornese says. He worked as a paramedic
during college and then decided pursuing a
career in medicine was what he was meant
to do.
Livornese’s relaxed and conversational manner
belies his status as a chronic overachiever. While
most kids were happy to ski in high school, he
served on the rescue squad and got to leave
class when an EMT was needed for a rescue.

From the Ground Up
Livornese, who spends half of his time
working in his primary practice as a
pulmonologist, became interested in sleep
medicine when he was doing his residency
training in the early ’90s at the Medical College
of Pennsylvania, which had one of the few sleep
medicine fellowships at the time.

18	

“Sleep was interesting,” Livornese says.
“Also, it was kind of an emerging field. It was
somewhat unique to get involved in something
that wasn’t 1,000 years old. I sat and had
conversations with the fathers of sleep medicine.
The guys who wrote the original books in sleep
medicine, I’ve actually met and heard lecture. I
thought that was kind of a unique thing—to be
involved in something from the ground floor up
really had an appeal to me.”
Livornese went on to be board certified in
sleep medicine by both the American Board
of Sleep Medicine and the American Board of
Internal Medicine, receiving his first board in
1997.

Patient-centered
Livornese refers to his two practices as his
“dual personalities.” At his main practice,
Monmouth Pulmonary Consultants at Monmouth
Medical Center where he has been since 1997,
he is one of two doctors who are truly trained
in sleep.
In 2006, Livornese was able to help build the
novel, patient-centered program that makes his
other practice at Comfort Sleep Lab so successful.

“Our Comfort Sleep Lab is really a turnkey
program,” Livornese says. “For our area, we have
a pretty unique process where people get referred
from their primary care physicians and we take care
of everything else.”
And the unique program literally does. While
many sleep medicine patients end up running
around from one office to another for doctors’ visits,
sleep studies, and picking up CPAP equipment,
Comfort Sleep provides patients with the continuity
of care they deserve by providing all aspects of
sleep medicine in one building.
“Patients have their first sleep study, then they
decide if they want to go the CPAP route, and if
they don’t, then we have a dentist whose practice
is limited to sleep dentistry,” Livornese says. “I can
tell patients, ‘If you’re not happy with your CPAP,
then if you have half an hour, you can go next store
and meet our dentist.’ He’s literally in the exam
room next to me.”
The fact that patients can get all aspects of their
sleep medicine care addressed in one building
makes Comfort Sleep successful with those it treats.
Livornese points out that not only can patients
physically access all their care in one place, they
also have only one phone number to remember.

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“Whether they want to talk to me, or they
have a question about their CPAP or their bill,
it’s all one phone number,” Livornese says. “This
[program] is what I wanted to do, and it has
taken a long time to really get it working this
way. My bosses have given me a lot of support
and latitude to do what I want to do. I’ve got an
exceptional support team and a great group of
doctors working next to me.”
And not only are all of Comfort Sleep Lab’s
patients’ needs met in one place, the program is
meant to make the internist’s life easier as well.
“We make it easy for them,” Livornese
explains. “We say, ‘If you have a hunch that
one of your patients has sleep apnea, we will
do the rest.’ We help with all the insurance
work from the sleep study to the CPAP or oral
appliance. We don’t have insurance problems,
and I think for physicians and patients one of the
biggest problems nowadays is getting everything
approved by insurance.”

A Game Changer
For patients who have been suffering from
sleep disorders, receiving successful treatment is
a “game changer.”
“Since sleep apnea is somewhat of a chronic
disease, people don’t realize how tired they
are,” Livornese explains. “They come in and
say, ‘I’m a little tired during the day’; that’s just
because they’ve been severely tired for many
years, and they’ve modified their life. All of a
sudden, when we really correct the sleep apnea,
they have a new life.”
Patients who have been treated by Livornese
are often surprised by the improvement
in attentiveness and cognitive function they
experience after treatment.
As part of the sleep lab’s multidimensional
approach to sleep medicine, the program offers
behavioral therapy with a clinical psychologist
whose specialty is sleep disorders. This aspect of
the treatment is meant to support patients who
may be less likely to be dedicated to using their
CPAP because they are struggling with problems
like depression.
“A lot of times someone who is sleep deprived
is depressed,” Livornese says. “More often
than not, when you fix their sleep apnea, their
depression goes away. I’ve had a lot of patients
who have been carrying around a diagnosis of
depression for many years; we treat their sleep

From improving cognitive function to relieving
depression, Livornese has seen the transformations
that have taken place after successfully treating
sleep disorder patients. Most notably, two particular
cases stand out in his mind. In the first case, he
saved a marriage, and in the second, he may be
continuing to save lives.
“I saved the marriage of one of my favorite
patients,” Livornese said. “He came in a grumpy
old man. He and his wife actually had a fight in
my office because he didn’t want to be there. I had
to step in between them because I thought it was
coming to fists.
“I treated his sleep apnea and he just became a
teddy bear afterwards. Every time they came into
the office, his wife would hug me and say thank
you for giving me my husband back. It’s the kind of
thing that makes you want to get up in the morning
and keep going.”
The other case that stands out as a notable
success was when Livornese treated a limo driver
for sleep apnea after he fell asleep at the wheel and
almost crashed. The driver started using a CPAP and
has since changed jobs.
“He’s so awake now he wanted to get out of
[limo driving]; now he’s a long haul truck driver,
and his CPAP unit sits in his sleeper cab and he uses
it every night,” Livornese says. “He’s an instructor
for a trucking school, and he’s actually ‘diagnosing’
people with sleep apnea and sending them to their
doctors. He’s my advocate in the field.”

apnea, and all of a sudden they are no longer
depressed.”

Building a Better MouseTrap
Comfort Sleep’s CPAP compliance program
is built to be patient centered. Livornese makes
it clear that “no treatment works if the patient
does not use it.” The team’s goal is to find the
correct treatment for each individual patient and
to make it difficult for them not to use it.
“We make it so that it’s less painful to use
the CPAP machine than have to tolerate us
trying to make you use it,” Livornese says. “We
have always been trying to figure out how to
build a better mousetrap. One of the few things
that helps people improve their usage is having
support.”
And Comfort Sleep’s support is like a
mousetrap. There is almost no way of escaping
the program’s support team. After someone gets
a CPAP unit, they are set up with an appointment
with the doctor or nurse practitioner. Along with
face-to-face interaction in the office, patients are
also set up with coaching calls each week until it
is clear they are committed to using the machine.
A technician calls them, and if the technician
detects any issues, the patient is passed on to
one of the lab’s respiratory therapists. Also,
when the patient is initially handed the CPAP,
the respiratory therapist fits all the equipment on
the patient and, according to Livornese, “They
are not allowed to leave until they say that they
are comfortable with it.
“We have tremendous follow-up,” Livornese
says. “Now we can download [a patient’s] CPAP
information through the phone, and we can
see if the person is using it, and if not, we will
concentrate more work toward them.”
The lab has therapists on the road every day
stopping by patients’ houses to find out why
they are not using their CPAP. Thanks to all of
the support a sleep lab patient can expect to
receive, the compliance rate is very high.
“Many times patients just want to know what
they are going through is normal,” Livornese
says.

A Top Doctor
Aside from his pulmonary and sleep medicine
practices, Livornese still finds time for fun as a pilot,
flying for the Coast Guard Auxiliary in the New York
Metropolitan Area. Livornese also still hits the ski
slopes, thankful for the inspiration he received that
led him to ultimately build a program that makes
it almost impossible for people suffering from sleep
disorders to fail at improving their quality of life.
Tina Page is a contributing writer for Sleep Review.
She can be reached at sleepeditor@allied360.com.

Douglas Livornese, MD, FACP, FCCP, FAASM

Success

Comfort Sleep
2240 Hwy 33, Suite 114	
Neptune City, NJ 07753	
732.455.3030
www.comfortsleep.net

One of the most rewarding parts of working
in the field of sleep medicine for Livornese is
to actually witness the core improvements his
program makes in patients’ lives.

	

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Alexander Villareal, MD

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Proactive Patient
Care
by Phyllis Hanlon

As health care evolves, Alexander Villareal,
MD, keeps Geisinger Health Systems, Sleep
Disorders Centers, ahead of the curve.
The Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention (CDC) reports that an estimated
50 to 70 million American adults suffer with
some type of sleep disorder. Moreover, sleep
insufficiency has been linked to motor vehicle
accidents, industrial disasters, occupational
errors, and medical issues, such as diabetes,
obesity, hypertension, cardiovascular disease,
and depression. CDC statistics also indicate that
the alarming increase in pediatric obesity—
in 2008, more than one-third of children and
adolescents were overweight or obese—can
be linked to other medical conditions, including
sleep apnea.1,2 Fortunately, medical advances
have resulted in more accurate testing methods,
more effective treatment options, and improved
patient outcomes. Leading the way in diagnosing
and treating a variety of sleep-related disorders
is the Geisinger Health Systems, Sleep Disorders
Centers, in Danville, Pa.
One of the first accredited sleep centers in
central Pennsylvania, Geisinger Sleep Disorders
Center was founded by Andrew P. Matragrano,
MD, in 1984. The facility began as a two-bed
operation and in the past 4 years has grown to
25 beds with six locations throughout central
and northeast Pennsylvania. Accredited by the
American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM)
and the Joint Commission on Accreditation of
Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO), the Centers
boast 10 board-certified sleep specialists;
advanced practitioners in neurology, psychology,
and pulmonary medicine; registered or registryeligible technicians; and an integrated scheduling
team. Geisinger Sleep Disorders Centers also
feature an experienced otolaryngologist, oral

20	

surgeons who can deliver surgical solutions,
and a dentist with 10 years’ experience who
can suggest client-specific oral appliances. This
multidisciplinary approach enables the Centers
to provide their adult and pediatric patients
more choices when scheduling appointments
and sleep studies, a range of treatment options,
and, ultimately, better results.
Through an active community and physician
awareness program, Geisinger Sleep Disorders
Centers utilize a grassroots approach to
increasing mindfulness of sleep-related problems
and to fostering collaborative relationships
among patients and primary care physicians and/
or other practitioners and sleep physicians to
determine the presence of an underlying sleeprelated issue, which might be affecting daytime
performance and well-being.

Expertise Delivering
Comprehensive Diagnosis
and Treatment
Determining the cause of a sleep disorder
requires expertise and experience in the field. The
sleep specialists at Geisinger pride themselves on
treating all cases, from the most straightforward
to the most difficult, including those with
comorbid conditions or previously unresolved
sleep issues. The Centers offer evaluation,
diagnostic and treatment services, behavioral
sleep medicine, comprehensive evaluation and

nonpharmacological management of insomnia,
and an all-inclusive patient compliance program.
The Centers also provide diagnostic and
therapeutic services at the Janet Weis Children’s
Hospital for high-risk children (newborn and up).
Moreover, Geisinger Sleep Disorders Centers
offer a full panel of sleep studies, including split
studies; out of center sleep testing; nocturnal
polysomnography; nasal CPAP (continuous
positive airway pressure) titrations; and day sleep
studies to accommodate night shift workers.
Since on-site studies may be inconvenient for
some patients, the Centers offer home testing.
All together, the Centers have the capacity to
conduct 26 studies per night.
Not only do the Centers offer several
comprehensive sleep studies, the facilities also
strive to maintain a turnaround time on test
results of fewer than 24 hours; the Centers have
achieved a 94% success rate.
Follow-up ranks high on the Centers’ to-do
list. Experienced sleep technicians call all CPAP
patients at 72 hours, 30 days, and 6 months
to ensure that equipment is in working order
and that the patient’s condition is stable. This
process helps to identify patients who may be
experiencing more serious problems or who are
in need of supplies or additional help.
Geisinger Sleep Disorders Centers participate
in several community events, sponsor sleep
disorder support groups, and partake in “meet

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and greet” occasions. For the last 3 years,
the Centers have organized a sleep medicine
conference that offers American Medical
Association credits to attendees. This year’s
conference will be held in May and is designed
to educate all medical professionals, regardless
of current sleep medicine expertise status.

Dedicated to Sleep Medicine
Since 2007, Alexander Villareal, MD, has
been an integral part of the multidisciplinary
team at the Geisinger Sleep Disorders Centers.
He earned his medical degree from Nuestra
Senora de La Paz University in Bolivia in 1999.
In 2005, he completed a 3-year residency in
internal medicine at Henry Ford Hospital in
Detroit, followed by a 2-year fellowship in
sleep medicine at the same institution.
Board certified in internal medicine and
sleep medicine and director of sleep medicine
at Geisinger Sleep Disorders Centers, Villareal
became interested in this health niche during
his pulmonary medicine residency. “I found
the topic of sleep apnea fascinating and asked
to have an elective in sleep medicine. That
[experience] increased my interest and passion
in the subject,” he says.
Villareal treats adult patients who present
with sleep apnea; insomnia; parasomnias,
including sleep walking, night terrors, teeth
grinding, and other sleep issues; restless legs
syndrome; and narcolepsy. Additionally, his
patient load includes adolescents and school
age children with non-sleep apnea problems,
such as narcolepsy, insomnia, and delayed
sleep syndrome.
Villareal bases his treatment options on
standard medical care and scientific evidence
in collaboration with the patient. “I always
involve the patient in the decision. I ask
them their preference,” he says, adding
that he attempts to increase the patient’s
understanding of their particular sleep
condition. “I educate them about the
diagnosis and treatment options and share the
reasons behind my advice. If they understand,
they can make better choices, which leads to
better compliance.”
For many sleep apnea patients, CPAP masks
are the first line of defense, but Villareal
believes treatment doesn’t end with CPAP.
“It begins there,” he says. For example, all

Meeting Future
Challenges Proactively

obese patients are offered a referral to an
obesity clinic. “Some patients undergo gastric
bypass, which might cure the problem,”
Villareal says. He points out that with the
variety of sleep specialists on staff, patients
have the advantage of combination therapy,
eg, a dental appliance and surgery, whenever
appropriate. “We also pride ourselves
on providing therapy that helps patients
previously determined to be CPAP-intolerant.
In those cases, other specialists may not have
worked long enough with the patient. We have
an evidence-based technique to help patients
adapt to using CPAP,” he says. “We identify
the specific problem that’s not allowing
the patient to use the device. For example,
patients with severe nasal congestion find it
hard to use the CPAP machine or they could
be claustrophobic. So we use a nasal pillow
or desensitization techniques. These help the
patient ‘grow into’ the CPAP.”
Some sleep conditions—sleep apnea
and insomnia, for instance—are chronic
and require medium to long-term followup, depending on response to therapy,
according to Villareal. “We partner with the
referring physician or PCP. We keep the line
of communication open and also relieve the
patient from having to do paperwork and
calling in prescriptions.”

As changes to the existing health system are
implemented, every health care discipline will face
challenges, and the Centers will also be subject
to some of the same challenges. Reimbursement
from insurance companies will undergo changes,
and the way in which facilities schedule
in-laboratory sleep studies is being overhauled to
be more cost effective, according to Villareal. “The
economy is affecting labs significantly,” he says.
Additionally, more attention will be focused on
outcomes and proof that quality of care meets
or exceeds industry standards. “So we may
need to provide more documentation regarding
percentage of improvements, medications, cost
savings, and other aspects that prove our care
is outstanding,” Villareal says. “We’re working
proactively to get ready for the economic
challenges and quality projects, so we’re ahead
of the curve.” The Centers have been monitoring
outcomes for 3 years and have compiled a
significant amount of data.
In the future, Villareal hopes to create more
elective internal medicine rotations for pediatric
and family medicine residents at the Centers to
help educate these practitioners, increase their
existing knowledge base, and enhance patient
care.
Phyllis Hanlon is a freelance writer based
in Charlton, Mass. She can be reached at
sleepeditor@allied360.com.

Professional Passion
Villareal considers Geisinger Sleep Disorders
Centers as an institution “a blessing.” He
says, “We are a nonprofit, multispecialty
group committed to raising awareness of sleep
disorders and educating non-sleep providers
about these issues,” he says. “We employ a
mature electronic medical records system and
practice system-based medicine, which is one
of the core competencies recommended by the
Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical
Education (ACGME).”
Villareal’s passion for and commitment to
his work is evident. But he prefers to shine
the spotlight on his colleagues. “Without that
team, we couldn’t accomplish a fraction of
what we do,” he says. “My goal is to make
the Centers the best place to provide help
for those with sleep issues, contribute to the
knowledge in this field, and develop costeffective ways of treating sleep problems.”

References
1. Ogden CL, Carroll MD, Curtin LR, Lamb MM,
Flegal KM. Prevalence of high body mass index in
US children and adolescents, 2007–2008. JAMA.
2010;303(3):242–249.
2. National Center for Health Statistics. Health,
United States, 2010: With Special Features on
Death and Dying. Hyattsville, Md: US Department
of Health and Human Services; 2011.

Alexander Villareal, MD	
Geisinger Sleep Disorders Center Woodbine
109 Woodbine Lane
Danville, PA 17821 	
877.507.4957	
www.geisinger.org/services/sleep/index.html	

	

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Glenn Becker, CEO

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Putting Care into
Health Care
By Tina Page
The International Institute of Sleep has
implemented a myriad of programs that
support both patients and the sleep profession.

The International Institute of Sleep (IIS) puts
patients before profits, a principle that has guided
the company well since its founding in 1999. In
that time, the company not only has earned a
reputation as an industry leader in patient care and
professional development but also has grown to
include eight locations servicing more than 10,000
patients annually across Florida and a network of
hundreds of sleep labs.
When Glenn Becker, CEO and president of the
Florida-based company, set out to create IIS, he was
an outsider looking into an industry that he knew he
could make better. He was confident that he could
raise the bar in patient care for people suffering
from sleep disorders.
“As opposed to the traditional way people do
sleep medicine, I decided to put my spin on it and
create a comprehensive approach to sleep medicine
as opposed to the patient-in, patient-out approach
to sleep,” Becker says. “We like to say we put the
‘care’ back in health care.”
And that approach extends beyond patients
to a commitment to nurturing the professional
development of sleep medicine practitioners. Relying
on a myriad of programs, IIS has set a high bar for
itself, but it’s a bar the staff seek to surpass in every
endeavor they undertake.

Serving Patients
IIS, always at the forefront of optimizing patient
care, utilizes every means available to the industry
to ensure patients are treated successfully. The
company not only offers traditional in-lab tests
any hour of the day or night but also was an early
adopter of home sleep testing (HST) and remotely
attended sleep studies.

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The company’s pursuit to optimize care doesn’t
stop at the diagnostic stage. “I wanted to create
a more comprehensive approach and design a
disease management program following the
patient from start through life,” Becker says.
And that’s exactly what Becker did. IIS’
disease management program for patients with
obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) begins with a
clinical assessment by a licensed respiratory
care practitioner with special training in sleep
disorders. This assessment provides the basis
for development of an individualized care plan,
designed to ensure successful compliance with
treatment.
The care plan includes a mask desensitization
program for those reluctant to wear a mask, a
replacement part program where patients are
resupplied with the appropriate disposable parts
when needed, and a retitration program, which
monitors patient PAP device pressure adequacy
and ensures each is adjusted to its optimal and
therapeutic levels according to the physical
changes that people experience throughout
their lives.
In order to guarantee that patients are receiving
the level of care that the IIS requires of itself, the
company also provides home medical equipment
(HME). As an HME/durable medical equipment
(DME) provider, IIS can offer alternatives to
patients who cannot tolerate CPAP, including oral
appliances and new therapies like Provent.

“Not everyone wants to deal with a CPAP
machine, which is fine,” Becker says. “We have
other means to help them, like Provent therapy,
a fairly new direction to take, which we’ve been
extremely successful with.” Provent fits over
both nostrils and uses a MicroValve to keep the
airway open.
“It’s an alternative that most sleep programs
don’t offer because it’s not in their niche,” Rick
James, former director of IIS, explains. “[The ability
to offer alternatives] is just the reason IIS got into
DME. It’s something the patients need for that
continuum of care. It doesn’t just end at doing the
sleep study.”
The variety of alternatives that IIS offers allows
for a truly individualized approach to therapy,
where tailored treatments lead to satisfied
patients. Becker credits the numerous programs
supporting the patient—as well as the lab’s caring
staff who work for the good of those patients—
for IIS’ success and its impressive 90% CPAP
compliance rate.
“I am very passionate about what I do,” Becker
says. “I truly care about every single patient. I
personally get on the phone with patients who are
refusing to come in because they don’t want to
put a mask on their face. I do what I can to ease
their minds about the process and to reinforce the
tremendous life-saving benefits of completing the
program. I assure them, if it’s about money, don’t
worry about it.”

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Because of IIS’ phenomenal success, Becker has
generously been able to provide more than 20% of
its services for little or no cost to patients.

Niche Care
For Becker and IIS, success is not to be limited
to the patient’s walking through the doors. IIS
has a history of reaching out to those who are at
the greatest need, throughout the country. The
company boasts a variety of programs aimed at
raising awareness and improving treatment of
sleep disorders in transportation, occupational, and
perioperative settings.
IIS’ transportation program targets truckers,
pilots, train conductors, and bus drivers. The
company creates customized solutions for
managing sleep disorder screening, diagnosis,
and treatment of any of the more than 80 sleep
disorders possibly afflicting such professionals.
With more than $12 billion a year spent on
dealing with accidents due to drowsy driving,
many large transportation companies have shown
a great deal of interest in working with IIS to
address this problem.
When an organization partners with IIS to
institute a comprehensive wellness program for
its employees, results are astounding. Well-rested
transportation industry employees not only result
in reduced crash rates and severity but exhibit
improvements in overall health and cognitive
function. Companies also benefit from reduced
legal and insurance expenses, and ultimately
improve profits because employees become more
productive as they become better rested.
In the event that an accident does occur, IIS
is there for its clients to answer to insurance
companies, investigators, and attorneys, confirming
the company’s dedication to preventing accidents.
IIS also offers an Occupational Risk Education
program. Proving once again that addressing sleep
problems is key to improving performance and
saving lives, this program is available to public
safety workers, high-risk employees, those in the
medical fields, and any company looking to combat
absenteeism and reduce workplace accidents.
Studies have shown a link between medical
mistakes and loss of sleep or poor-quality sleep.
Numerous workplace disasters have been
associated with preventable sleep deprivation.
Companies choosing to employ IIS’ Occupational
Risk Education program are provided with tools
meant to combat injuries, accidents, concentration

more effective operations, and an increase in the
bottom line.
Education, however, does not stop at the
sleep lab. IIS also offers training and webinars
to physicians looking to learn more about sleep
medicine, which has increased disease awareness
and advocacy.
Beyond education, IIS has made itself available
to actually manage sleep labs and centers across
the country, sharing its training and operations
protocols, assisting with accreditation, and leading
labs through every step needed to create a strong
and profitable program that leaves patients
satisfied and confident in their care.
“I’m trying to give these companies that can’t
do it on their own a leg up and we’ll help lead
them through what they need to do,” Becker
says. “There are so many things that we’ve spent
years and years doing that we have it down to a
science.”
The Consulting program offers all of the expertise
IIS has accumulated throughout the process of
building itself into a gold standard sleep center
operation. As an industry leader in offering turnkey
solutions, joint ventures, management services, and
consulting services, IIS offers programs customized
to each client’s particular situation.
How is IIS able to do all these things successfully?
The company is willing to step away from the norm
for the sake of the patient. Because of their pursuit
of new avenues of diagnosis and treatment, it has
been able to treat a broad population of patients,
from truckers to surgical anesthesia patients, and
to educate those involved in the sleep industry,
from lab managers to sleep technologists. IIS’ twotiered approach of focusing on professionals and
patients has led to successful patient outcomes not
only for IIS but also for the many sleep labs IIS has
partnered with and educated.
Glenn Becker, president and CEO of IIS, can be
reached at (800) 481-3870, gbecker@intlsleep.com.

loss, moodiness, and health problems related to
poor quality and lack of sleep.
Many of the organizations taking advantage
of the Occupational Risk Education program are
self-insured and so are looking to save millions of
dollars on overall health care costs.
“There’s been a lot of interest from self-insured
employers who offer a comprehensive wellness
program to their employees,” James explains.
“They are so impressed with our outcomes that
they are pretty quick to consider our program
standard protocol for all employees, not just the
ones who are at risk for occupational hazard, but
[also] clerical [employees] who may have a number
of health claims that suddenly diminish because we
uncovered that they were at risk for sleep apnea.”
IIS also has a Perioperative Program aimed at
implementing measures to ensure the safety of
people with undiagnosed sleep apnea receiving
anesthesia during surgery. Often these patients do
not have enough time to go through a complete
sleep study prior to surgery. Instead they are
given a home sleep testing device for a quick
preoperative assessment.
“The patient can come in that day and get the
HST, and the very next day we can have them
on an auto PAP machine until after the surgery,”
Becker explains. “Then, if necessary, we can have
them come in for a proper CPAP titration study. But
at least they’re covered preoperative, throughout
surgery, and postoperative.”

Serving the Profession
While the eclectic range of IIS’ programs
has helped to save lives, improve performance
and productivity, reduce health care costs, and
combat disease, IIS aims to do even more. The
company wants to further the reach and perfect
the administration of sleep medicine. All of its
programs are created to serve as road maps for
other sleep labs, with the aim of improving patient
care and sleep medicine.
Sleep labs have the opportunity to benefit from
IIS’ credibility and knowledge through its formal
sleep school developed in 2007. The Business
Training component designs an exclusive program
to train sleep center employees to be prepared and
enthusiastic about their role in providing patients
with a compassionate, productive, and simple sleep
lab experience.
IIS believes a well-trained, sympathetic staff
means better patient outcomes, less staff turnover,

Tina Page is a freelance writer based in Lomita, Calif.
She can be reached at sleepeditor@allied360.com.

Glenn Becker, CEO
International Institute of Sleep
Multiple Locations
Greater Florida
800.481.3870
http://intlsleep.com/

	

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Apnix Sleep Diagnostics

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Rooted in Health
Care
By Tina Page
Business acumen and ambition to work in
health care led Steve Cela to form Apnix
Sleep Diagnostics.

Growth of a Commitment

When Steve Cela founded Apnix Sleep Diagnostics
in 2000, it was an opportunity to return to his health
care roots. Although he’d aspired to be a doctor, life
took him in a different direction—business, to be
precise. After completing a Master’s in Business at
the University of Texas, Cela’s professional path
took him down a road that included private equity
and investment work, as well as acquisition and
growth of a manufacturing company. Little did he
know his background would affect thousands of
lives for the better.
In 2000, Cela met a respiratory therapist who
helped treat a friend for sleep apnea. Cela was
skeptical about the effectiveness of any treatment
that involved wearing a mask. He doubted anyone
would do it, but soon saw the improvement his
friend experienced.
That’s when Cela got the offer that brought him
back to his health care roots. The same therapist
who treated his friend was looking for investors to
start a sleep diagnostic company. Cela, seeing first
hand how this service transformed his friend, started
researching to see if this was a business path he
wanted to take. He soon discovered that 70 million
people suffered from some sort of sleep disorder
and would be more than willing to use CPAP to
treat a problem like sleep apnea. He also discovered
how this therapy could impact other aspects of
health. It was an opportunity to combine his health
care ambitions with the business acumen he had
developed throughout his professional career; and
soon after, Apnix Sleep Diagnostics was born.
“Immediately, I saw patients’ lives being
changed. I actually saw a guy come in and hug my
partner saying that he saved his life, that really had
an impact on me personally,” Cela recalls.

Now, after 11 years in business, Apnix Sleep
Diagnostics, an American Academy of Sleep
Medicine-accredited lab, has grown to nine
locations in the greater Houston area. Apnix has
gone from conducting 40 sleep studies a month
to more than 300 monthly studies, and is still
growing. That growth is a direct result of Cela and
Apnix’s commitment to their patients and a focus
on providing a “wow” factor when it comes to
customer service.
Apnix sees itself as “a hospitality business in
which we provide medical care or diagnostic
services to patients,” Cela says. This philosophy,
coupled with its continued commitment to customer
service, has created a company that makes sleep
diagnostic testing a more pleasant experience.
“One of the top values we offer that makes us
so different is exceptional customer service. We
strive to really exceed patients’ expectations and
satisfaction. That value is pervasive to the whole
company,” Cela says.
But Apnix is not just about customer service
and aesthetics. At its core, it’s a sleep diagnostic
lab on a mission to help patients overcome sleep
disorders through diagnosis and treatment.
That mission continues beyond its doors. Apnix
is committed to educating people on sleep
awareness by advocating the value of good sleep
health. This is being done through participation
in local events and health fairs, and directly with
local primary care physicians by helping educate
them about the importance of good sleep health
and its effects on other medical issues, making
Apnix the first line of defense in combating
sleep-related disorders. Plus, Apnix, to further its
educational mission, has cultivated relationships
with a number of the most nationally recognized

24	

experts in the field of sleep medicine. Some of
these authorities are now included as facility
medical directors as well as consultants on its
clinical advisory board.
Another key practice Cela put in place is a patient
satisfaction survey. This ensures that Apnix is living
up to the highest of standards and patients are
consistently receiving the best service. The final
question on that survey: Would you refer a family
member or friend to us? “The answer is consistently
yes, and they do refer people! I think that is the
ultimate question that gives Apnix the seal of
approval,” Cela says.
The patient’s total experience is the company’s
focus. They don’t want the patient’s experience to
feel like they’re in a lab. “We want it to look good,
feel good, and even smell good, nonclinical,” Cela
says. “That’s one of the major factors that set us
apart.”
Apnix’s labs are run by devoted professionals and
feature luxurious surroundings, spacious patient
rooms, flat screen TVs, private baths and showers,
and hotel-quality toiletries; according to its patients,
coming to Apnix for a sleep test is much like staying
in a five-star hotel.
The Apnix mission, Cela says, is “to continually
improve our services, exceed customer expectations
and the care experience, and ultimately change our
patients’ lives for the better.”
Tina Page is a freelance writer based in Lomita, Calif.
She can be reached at sleepeditor@allied360.com.

Apnix Sleep Diagnostics
Greater Houston, Texas
713.349.9767
www.apnix.com

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Pulmonary Associates of Richmond

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A Commitment to
Comprehensive Care
by Alison Werner
Pulmonary Associates of Richmond’s Sleep
Disorder Centers have made a commitment
to providing comprehensive and individualized care to local sleep patients.

For over 30 years, Pulmonary Associates of
Richmond (PAR) has provided comprehensive
and individualized care to Richmond, Va-area
pulmonary patients with acute and chronic
disorders, including critically ill patients who
require more directed and monitored care. It
was this commitment to individualized care
that led PAR to expand its services into sleep
medicine in 2006. Having seen first hand the
lack of patient compliance in stand-alone
diagnostic facilities in the area, PAR’s physicians
sought to create a sleep disorder center that
offered patients both diagnostic as well as
clinical care to improve their lives, their sleep,
and their health.
Since PAR’s expansion into sleep medicine,
its Sleep Disorder Centers have grown to three
locations, with four beds each, and seven
physicians, who are uniquely board certified in
sleep, pulmonary, and critical care medicine, as
well as 16 sleep technologists—half of them
are registered—and five medical assistants.
This team, which conducts more than 250 sleep
studies per month, makes a point of being
there for patients throughout their experience,
according to Ashley Weeks, marketing
coordinator at PAR.
“They love sleep medicine and are very
involved in patient care. They are there to answer
all questions that the patients may have,” she
says, adding that the staff at PAR makes a
point of putting in the extra effort to ease the
apprehension or nervousness of hesitant patients.
This commitment to making the patient
experience as comfortable and easy as possible

carries into the lab setting itself. All of PAR’s
Sleep Disorder Centers, which are accredited
through the American Academy of Sleep
Medicine, feature identical patient bedrooms for
testing. Every room, as Weeks describes them, is
“comfortable” and features hardwood floors, a
queen-sized bed, satellite TV, and a full private
restroom. In addition, patients meet with the
technician administering their sleep study in
advance to go over the testing process and all the
equipment involved, including the masks, belts,
and sensors, so that the patient understands
what is going to happen on the night of their
study. This combination of a homey environment
and personalized interaction before the study
even gets under way goes a long way to making
the patient’s testing experience, which can often
be stressful, as comfortable as possible.
Because PAR’s Sleep Disorder Centers are fullservice, a sleep physician is available the morning
after the patient’s sleep study to look over the
preliminary results with the patient and discuss
diagnosis and treatment options. While PAR is
not a provider of durable medical equipment
(DME), it works closely with a number of home
health care companies in the Richmond area,
one of which sends representatives to the facility
in the mornings to set patients up with CPAP
or other DME equipment if the results of their
overnight sleep test warrant it. In other words,
“Patients have their results and equipment that
very morning after their study,” Weeks says.
But once a patient walks out with their CPAP
equipment, that’s not the end of their experience.
The staff follows up with patients in the clinic

about 4 weeks after their study to see how
they are doing with their equipment. Because
PAR uses “higher models of CPAP and BiPAP
that record a patient’s AHI, hours of usage, and
mask leak,” staff is able to effectively look at
compliance, according to Weeks.
“[Using these models] helps us to understand
where patients are running into problems and
get compliance up. We are very aggressive in
achieving compliance,” Weeks says.
Patients then receive additional follow-up
as warranted. And should a patient for some
reason end up in one of the area hospitals
with sleep or pulmonary-related issues, PAR’s
physicians are able to provide inpatient care
as well since they round at both the hospitals
in the HCA Virginia Health System and Bon
Secours Richmond Health System.
Throughout the patient experience at PAR, the
underlying theme is commitment to the individual
patient’s care and health—a focus that has been
there since the beginning of PAR’s expansion into
sleep care and will continue on into the future of
serving Richmond area sleep patients.
Alison Werner is associate editor of Sleep Review.
She can be reached at sleepeditor@allied360.com.

Pulmonary Associates of Richmond
Sleep Disorder Centers
1000 Boulders Parkway, Ste 101
Richmond, VA 23225	
804.320.4243
www.paraccess.com

	

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Motivated Drive
By Nina Silberstein
Ahmad M. Ibrahimbacha, MD, an inspired
physician with Syrian roots, delivers optimal
care to a vast network of sleep disorder
patients.

As a boy growing up in Syria, Ahmad M.
Ibrahimbacha, MD, became interested in
medicine while watching his mother give his
grandfather insulin shots. Ibrahimbacha’s mother
picked up on her son’s curiosity, and as good
parents do, she inspired Ibrahimbacha, telling
him she would send him to London or America
to be a famous doctor. That inspiration led
Ibrahimbacha to study in the United States to
become a sleep physician where today he uses
the same kind of motivation to help patients
achieve optimal sleep health.
After graduating from the Aleppo School of
Medicine in Syria in 1982, Ibrahimbacha came
to the United States to further his education and
focus his scope of practice. “I came to the United
States because it is the best place on earth to
achieve your dream and goals and the country
offers the best education,” he says.
In the United States, Ibrahimbacha completed
his residency in internal medicine at St. Barnabas
Hospital in the Bronx, NY. He finished his
fellowship in pulmonary and critical care medicine
at New York Medical College in Valhalla, NY.
Practicing sleep medicine since 1995
and achieving board certification in internal,
pulmonary, critical care, and sleep medicine,
Ibrahimbacha now serves as the director for
the Sleep Disorders Center at SkyRidge Medical
Center, Cleveland, Tenn, as well as a physician
adviser and chairman of the utilization review
committee for the SkyRidge Medical Center.
In addition, he is director of Sleep Labs of the
South, also located in Cleveland. The Sleep
Disorders Center at SkyRidge Medical Center

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features six beds and is accredited by the
American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM).
The fact that Ibrahimbacha is certified in four
subspecialties gives him an edge when delivering
high-quality care to his patient base in Cleveland.
“It’s a one-stop shop for my patients,” he says.
Ibrahimbacha sees the full spectrum of sleep
disorder patients including sleep-disordered
breathing (SDB), insomnia, restless legs syndrome,
and a wide variety of other disorders. With SDB
being the most commonly treated disorder,
Ibrahimbacha has structured an individualized
approach to care. SDB patients who are treated
with continuous positive airway pressure
(CPAP) are carefully managed by Ibrahimbacha.
For patients who struggle with the therapy,
Ibrahimbacha has established an effective
network of physicians that can offer patients
alternatives to CPAP treatment. Ibrahimbacha
has developed relationships with dentists who
specialize in offering oral appliances and ENTs
who can offer patients surgical treatments for
obstructive sleep apnea. This network will serve
the facilities well as health care reform takes place
and as proposals like the American Academy
of Sleep Medicine’s Integrated Delivery Model
potentially take shape.
The Integrated Delivery Model starts with a
patient referral to a sleep specialist who decides
the patient’s treatment pathway. Within the
context of this model, not only would the sleep
specialist provide durable medical equipment
(DME), but they would also have a network of
dental sleep medicine and surgical specialists to
whom to refer patients. Having these established

relationships and direct access to DME would
close the treatment loop, creating a more
seamless management process that keeps the
sleep specialist at the center with the patient.
“We need to figure out how sleep medicine
will fit in health care reform, and more
specifically, how to deliver a more integrated
sleep management model to keep doctors
more engaged throughout a patient’s care
period,” Ibrahimbacha says. “Integrated sleep
management is important because it creates a
patient management system that stays with the
patient from beginning to end.”
As sleep medicine evolves, Ibrahimbacha looks
forward to advancing the facilities where he
is based to ensure patients are receiving topnotch treatment. Although keeping up on a
rapidly changing health care profession takes
time and commitment, Ibrahimbacha has not
forgot his roots in Syria. “I visit every 2 to 3
years to do work by giving free consultations to
the community and to exchange knowledge and
experience with doctors,” he says.
Nina Silberstein is a contributing writer for Sleep
Review. She can be reached at sleepeditor@
allied360.com.

Ahmad M. Ibrahimbacha, MD
SkyRidge Medical Center
Blue Ridge Pulmonary Medicine, PC
110 Dunhill Place
Cleveland, TN 37311
423.476.2212
www.skyridgemedicalcenter.net

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Weill Cornell Center for Sleep Medicine

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Making Things
Better
by Renee Diiulio
The Weill Cornell Center for Sleep Medicine
seeks to advance sleep medicine through
comprehensive care, quality processes, and
intense research.

At the Weill Cornell Center for Sleep Medicine
in New York, NY, the staff is not just dedicated
to improving patients’ sleep—they are focused
on improving patients’ overall health, today and
tomorrow. This means not just diagnosing and
treating patients’ sleep disorders, but providing
comprehensive care, implementing smart practice
processes, and completing research intended to
advance the discipline of sleep medicine.
“We try to move the field ahead,” Arthur
J. Spielman, PhD, co-director of the Center for
Sleep Medicine and adjunct clinical professor of
psychology in neurology at the Weill Cornell Medical
College of Cornell University, also in New York, says
of the clinic’s philosophy.
The center first opened in 1985 at Weill Cornell
Medical College and moved to the Manhattan
area in the 1990s. About 2 years ago, the sleep
center moved again, into a new facility designed
specifically for the sleep team’s use. Located in the
Upper East Side of the city, it is near the Memorial
Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and The Rockefeller
University.
The Weill Cornell Center for Sleep Medicine
collaborates with both institutions on research
designed to advance sleep science. Currently, it is
enrolling patients for two clinical trials in sleep apnea
and recently closed enrollment on a third study on
sleep bruxism and desensitization in myofascial
face pain. “We don’t want to just stand on current
knowledge. We actively investigate,” Spielman says.

Center basics
The team at the center is comprised of a number
of specialists, including Spielman, a clinical

psychologist and a noted expert in insomnia. Ana
Krieger, MD, MPH, Spielman’s fellow co-director,
is a pulmonologist with expertise in sleep apnea.
Other team members specialize in neurology,
internal medicine, pulmonary medicine, ear, nose,
and throat (ENT), pediatrics, psychiatry, bariatric
surgery, nutrition, and endocrinology.
A nurse practitioner and technologists round out
the clinical staff. With studies running 6 nights a
week, there can be up to five technologists working
through the night, Spielman notes. A support staff
manages the office and proper paperwork, and
visiting physicians perform research and hone their
sleep medicine skills.
Patients come from neighboring institutions and
the associated medical facility, but also from the
metropolitan area. Patients may be referred or can
come in on their own.

Expert Treatment
With almost 50 years in the field (Spielman
was at the first sleep center certified in the United
States), he has seen it all—or nearly. “There is a
rare growling sleep disorder that I’ve never seen,”
Spielman says.
He is perhaps best known for his work in insomnia
and, subsequently, sees many patients with this
disorder. “Insomnia is the most prevalent sleep
disorder there is, but the health consequences of
obstructive sleep apnea, as well as the very effective
treatment regimens and management we have for
that, bring in many patients with that condition,”
Spielman says.
Sleep apnea patients are often treated with CPAP.
“CPAP is the most reliable treatment for obstructive
sleep apnea, but about one-quarter to one-third of
patients openly don’t use it,” Spielman says.
To improve patient compliance, the center offers

an intense adaptation program: patients come into
the lab to try on different masks; the staff work with
them to test the different pressures, show them
how to use the equipment, teach them relaxation
techniques, and evaluate what works best for each
individual. “It’s an extensive number of hours,”
Spielman says.
Spielman notes compliance is an issue
experienced and addressed by many sleep
centers, and solutions can be innovative.
Spielman has studied hypnosis as a method
to help patients adapt to CPAP during the first
month, with some success.

Quality Measures
The adaptation program will likely be modified
moving forward. The staff is constantly seeking
ways to improve care, and no improvement is too
small. The process is evolutionary, and no procedure
is static—even the tools are dynamic. The new
space has installed state-of-the-art equipment in the
12 sleep rooms and the control center.
“Everybody is concerned with making things
absolutely right,” Spielman says. And while
perfection is a constant objective, while they pursue
it, the staff at the Weill Cornell Center for Sleep
Medicine are definitely making things better.
Renee Diiulio is a freelance writer based in Manhattan
Beach, Calif. She can be reached at sleepeditor@
allied360.com.

Weill Cornell Center for Sleep Medicine
425 East 61st Street, 5th Floor
New York, NY 10065
646.962.7378
http://www.weill.cornell.edu/sleepcenter

	

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Rosen, David B., DMD

Simmons, Michael S., DMD

Dental Sleep Medicine of New
England
Lexington, Mass
877.447.6673
www.dentalsleepapnea.com

Simmons Dental Care
Palmdale, Calif
661.947.3163
www.simmonsdentalcare.com

Texas Medical & Sleep Specialists
Houston, Tex
713.464.4107
www.txmss.com

Appomattox Medical Center
Appomattox, Va
434.352.3003
www.appomattoxmedicalcenter.com

Soni, Prabhat, MD, FCCP, DABSM

Roth, Heidi, MD

University of North Carolina Sleep
Disorders Center
Chapel Hill, NC
919.966.4401
www.med.unc.edu

Sleep & Weight Loss Institute
Brooklyn, NY
718.787.1900	
www.sleeptobeslim.com

See
page 10

Sorresso, Dennis P., MD

Aspen Medical Associates PA
Teaneck, NJ
201.928.0200

Shands Starke Regional Medical
Center - Sleep Disorder Center
Starke, Fla
904.368.2300
www.shandsstarke.com

Shang, Jingzi, MD, PhD

Stack, Richard, MD

Salizzoni, Jeffrey, MD

UPMC Hamot Sleep Disorders Center
Erie, Pa
814.877.6000
www.hamot.org

Sharma, Sunil, MD, DABSM,
ABIM
East Carolina University Sleep
Disorders Center
Greenville, NC
252.744.4653	
www.ecu.edu

See
page 14

Mercy Sleep Center, Mercy San Juan
Medical Center
Carmichael, Calif
916.979.0347
www.mercysanjuan.org

Strohl, Kingman P., MD

University Hospitals Case Medical Center
Cleveland, Ohio
866.844.2273
www.uhhospitals.org

Su, Henry, MD

Shippey, Ford, MD

Sleep Center Hawaii
Honolulu, Hawaii
808.456.7378
www.sleepcenterhawaii.com

Washoe Sleep Disorders Center
See
Reno, Nev
page 4
775.329.4060	

Tucker, John H., DMD

Smith, Larry F. , MD, JD

Rotenberg, Joshua, MD

Torch, William, MD

Erie Dental Sleep Therapy; Tucker
Dental Excellence
Erie, Pa
814.836.2866
www.eriedentalsleeptherapy.com

Valsamis, Christina, MD

Winthrop Pediatric Associates
Mineola, NY
516.663.4600
www.winthroppeds.com

Winde, James, MD

Oregon Sleep Center
Hermiston, Ore
541.667.4104
www.hermistonsleepcenter.com

Wise, Merrill S., MD

Methodist Healthcare Sleep Disorders
Center
Memphis, Tenn
901.516.7000
www.methodisthealth.org

Yuen, Kin M., MD

Bay Sleep Clinic
Menlo Park, Calif
866.887.6673
www.baysleepclinic.com

Vaughn, Bradley V., MD

University of North Carolina Sleep
Disorders Center
Chapel Hill, NC
919.966.4401
www.med.unc.edu

Zureikat, George, MD

Mid-Michigan Sleep Center
Grand Blanc, Mich
810.953.3600
www.midmichigansleep.com

Villareal, Alexander, MD

Geisinger Sleep Disorders Center
Woodbine
See
Danville, Pa
page 20
877.507.4957	
www.geisinger.org/services/sleep/
index.html

Weingarten, Jeremy A., MD

New York Methodist Hospital; Weill
Cornell Medical College
Brooklyn, NY
718.780.3000
www.nym.org

Westerman, Jan, MD

Evergreen Sleep Disorders Center
Kirkland, Wash
425.899.4280
www.evergreenhospital.org

Pulmonary & Sleep Associates of
Jasper, PC
Jasper, Ala
205.387.7555
www.sleepfirst.com

Auxilio Mutuo Hospital Sleep
Laboratory

Center for Sleep Medicine at
Raritan Bay Medical Center

Children’s Hospital of
Wisconsin Sleep Center

Ballantyne Diagnostic & Sleep
Center

Cleveland Sleep Centers

Colorado Sleep Center of the
Rockies

BEST OF 2012
sleep facilities
Apnix Sleep Diagnostics
Greater Houston, Tex
713.349.9767	
www.apnix.com

See
page 24

Athens-Limestone Hospital
Sleep Disorders Center

Athens, Ala
256.771.7378
www.athenslimestonehospital.com

28	

San Juan, Puerto Rico
787.758.2000
www.auxilio.com

Charlotte, NC
704.943.5075
www.ballantynesleepcenter.com

Old Bridge, NJ
732.360.4255
www.rbmcsleepcenter.org

Middleburg Heights, Ohio
440.243.8044	
www.clevelandsleeps.com

See
page 16

Wauwatosa, Wis
414.266.2000
www.chw.org

Loveland, Colo
970.619.6000
www.sleepcenterotr.com

Sleep Review | Best of 2012

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BEST of

2012

Diagnostic Clinic of Longview
Longview, Tex
903.757.6042
www.dcol.net

East Carolina University Sleep
Disorders Center
Greenville, NC
252.744.4653	
www.ecu.edu

See
page 14

Erie Dental Sleep Therapy

Erie, Pa
814.836.2866
www.eriedentalsleeptherapy.com

Fundacion Sueno Vigilia
Colombiana IPS
Bogota, Colombia
www.fundasuvicol.org

Merit Center for Sleep Health
of Prairie Stone
Hoffman Estates, Ill
888.637.4848
www.meritsleep.com

Merit Center for Sleep Health
of Streamwood
Streamwood, Ill
888.637.4848
www.meritsleep.com

Lansing, Mich
517.887.6733
www.mwcsd.com

Atlanta, Ga
678.990.3962
www.fusionsleep.com

Geisinger Health Systems
Sleep Disorders Centers
See
page 20

Mid-West Center for Sleep
Disorders-Brighton
Brighton, Mich
810.225.7595
www.mwcsd.com

Morton Plant Mease Sleep
Disorders Centers

Integra Sleep LLC

Largo, Fla
727.734.6716
www.mpmhealth.com

Raleigh, NC
919.838.7600
www.integrasleep.com

International Institute of Sleep
Greater Florida
800.481.3870	
www.intlsleep.com

DeSoto, Tex
972.709.7190
www.medicalsleep.com

Mid-West Center for Sleep
Disorders

Fusion Sleep

Danville, Pa
877.507.4957	
www.geisinger.org/services/
sleep/index.html

Medical Sleep Solutions

See
page 22

Life Care Sleep and Health
Center
Kalamazoo, Mich
269.353.3187
www.lifecaresleep.net

Mary Washington Hospital
Sleep and Wake Disorders
Center

Fredericksburg, Va
540.741.7846
www.marywashingtonhealthcare.com

Munson Healthcare Sleep
Disorders Center
Traverse City, Mich
800.358.9641
www.munsonhealthcare.org

National Jewish Hospital
Denver, Colo
303.270.2708
www.nationaljewish.org

North Puget Sound Center for
Sleep Disorders
Everett, Wash
425.252.3693
www.ilikesleep.com

Mease Countryside Sleep
Disorders Center

Northwestern University Sleep
Disorders Center

Safety Harbor, Fla
727.725.6111
www.mortonplant.com

Chicago, Ill
312.926.2650
www.nmh.org

Medias Sleep Center

Oniro Sleep Labs

Galax, Va
276.676.3360
www.mediassleep.com

San Antonio, Tex
210.826.4000
www.onirosleeplab.com

Pulmonary Associates of
Richmond Sleep Disorders
Centers
Richmond, Va
804.320.4243	
www.paraccess.com

See
page 25

Rest of Your Life Sleep Evaluation
Center
Jasper, Ala
205.387.7555
www.sleepfirst.com

Port Jefferson, NY
613.474.6277
www.stcharleshospital.chsli.org

St. Vincent Regional Sleep
Disorder Center
Green Bay, Wis
920.431.3041
www.stvincenthospital.org

Texas Medical & Sleep Specialists

Sky Ridge Medical Center
Sleep Disorders Center
Lone Tree, Colo
720.225.3100	
www.skyridgemedcenter.com

Sleep Center at Cincinnati
Children’s Hospital
Cincinnati, Ohio
513.636.1077
www.cincinnatichildrens.org

Sleep Disorders Center - Santa
Rosa
Henrico, Va
804.282.1373
www.paraccess.com

Houston, Tex
713.464.4107
www.txmss.com

Texas Medical & Sleep Specialists
San Antonio, Tex
210.249.5020
www.txmss.com

Texas Pulmonary Sleep Center
Arlington, Tex
817.461.8772
www.tpsctr.com

The Everett Clinic Sleep Center
Everett, Wash
425.252.3693
www.everettclinic.com

Sleep Institute of New England

The Sleep Center of Austin

Sleep Labs of Texas

University at Buffalo School of
Medicine

Kingston, NH
603.347.8810
www.sleepne.com
Beaumont, Tex
409.832.6934

Sleep Solutions of Lexington
Medical Center
West Columbia, SC
803.791.2683
www.lexmed.com

Sleep Therapy & Research Center
San Antonio, Tex
210.614.6000
www.sleeptrc.com

Austin, Tex
512.697.9896
www.thesleepcenteraustin.com

Buffalo, NY
716.961.6955
www.smbs.buffalo.edu

University of Utah Sleep-Wake
Center
Salt Lake City, Utah
801.581.2016
www.healthcare.utah.edu

Vanderbilt Sleep Center

Sleep-Wake Disorders Center
of South Florida
Miami, Fla
305.661.5994
www.sleepwakesfl.com

SLUCare Sleep Disorder Center
St Louis, Mo
314.977.5337
www.slu.edu

Nashville, Tenn
615.343.5888
www.vanderbilthealth.com

Weill Cornell Center for Sleep
Medicine
See
New York, NY
page 27
646.962.7378	
www.weill.cornell.edu/sleepcenter

Sound Sleep Center

Maple Grove, Minn
763.315.4300
www.soundsleepcenter.com

	

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