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A Dream Market?

If you didn't know it already, it's time to wake up and smell the coffee. The sleep apnea market is the bright spot on the home respiratory scene, a solid
by SUSANNE HOPKINS

If you didn't know it already, it's time to wake up and smell the coffee. The sleep apnea market is the bright spot on the home respiratory scene, a solid niche market for home medical equipment providers.

While other sectors of HME are battered and bruised from constant reimbursement cuts and tightening red tape, the sleep market is hale and hearty. And it appears it will stay that way for some time to come. Take a look at the statistics:

  • Research and consulting firm Frost & Sullivan reports that there are already more than 2,800 sleep labs in the nation and more continue to open.

  • According to Wachovia Securities, the 90 sleep labs that responded to its first quarter 2006 survey on the industry reported an average 21 percent increase in beds over the past 12 months.

  • The same survey said respondents expect a 31 percent growth rate over the next 12 months.

  • Most manufacturers working in the area project 20 percent-plus growth in the obstructive sleep apnea market through 2007.

Beyond that, industry observers say, the potential market is huge.

“According to the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, it is estimated that more than 12 million Americans have OSA, many of whom remain undiagnosed,” says Nicole Wilson, product manager for Pleasanton, Calif.-based Puritan Bennett.

Overall, 40 million Americans suffer from some type of sleep disorder, notes Jacquelyn McClure, RRT, director, National Respiratory Network, government relations, for Lubbock, Texas-based The Med Group.

“And we're less than 20 percent penetrated into the market,” adds Mick Farrell, vice president of marketing for the Americas for San Diego, Calif.-based ResMed. “If [providers] are thinking of markets to get into, this is a no-brainer.”

MARKET PLUSES

Doris Posner, an RRT with Samaritan Medical Equipment in Newport, Ore., has seen the sleep market grow greatly in the last few years. “It's very, very dynamic,” Posner says. “It is a good niche.”

Posner says her customer base has expanded to include increasingly younger patients and a lot of husbands and wives. That growth has spurred Samaritan Pacific Hospital, with which Posner's HME is affiliated, to open its own sleep labs in Newport and Corvallis.

What is prompting the growth? Posner says sleep apnea is being diagnosed more as, increasingly, physicians see a link between OSA and cardiopulmonary function, obesity and diabetes.

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