At the end of June, Cedar Park Regional Sleep Center will be relocating to the Cedar Park Regional Medical Center campus on Medical Parkway from its current location on Lakeline Boulevard. Dr. Vishal Patel, the director of the sleep center, said the new facility will bring multiple benefits, including increased patient capacity and specialized care for those such as adult, pediatric and bariatric patients. “If anything has to do with sleep, it comes to our department,” Patel said. Patients with possible sleep conditions undergo sleep studies at the center. The studies—which involve being monitored by medical machinery while spending the night in one of the center’s hotel-like bedrooms—help Patel’s team diagnose patients and identify the underlying causes of their conditions. “We’re trying to find underlying causes of these issues so we can kind of treat it without any medications needed,” Patel said. “If we can treat a problem without medicating, I think that’s your gold standard of care.”

OVERNIGHT STAY

When a person has symptoms such as experiencing difficulties falling asleep or feeling tired throughout the day despite sleeping at night, he or she is often referred to the sleep department through his or her primary care doctor or a specialist, Patel said. He said the sleep study results often provide necessary diagnostic information for insurance companies to cover the costs of treatment for sleep conditions; otherwise, insurance may not cover the treatments. “It’s an overnight sleep study at the lab; we hook you up to a whole bunch of electrodes […] all over your scalp so we can watch your brain waves throughout the night,” he said. “We have a pulse oximeter on your finger, a snore mic to see if you’re snoring […] so with [a] one-night study, we can find out a lot of different things.” All of the rooms are set up like a hotel with a private bathroom and private bedroom with amenities like wireless internet, cable, showers and toiletries, he said. Patients come into the center shortly before their regular bed time and then get as much sleep as possible, Patel said.

EXPANDING CARE

The sleep center’s current building has four beds, with one room for pediatric patients, Patel said. The new facility is slated to have six beds, with three able to house pediatric patients. Rooms for pediatric patients need different equipment, he said. For starters, the rooms need to be bigger to house a parent as well as the patient. The rooms will also have children’s tables with coloring books, and decor more suited for children, he said. At its current facility, Patel said the sleep department books about 2-3 weeks out and operates at full capacity. With its new location and additional beds in Medical Building C of CPRMC, the department will not only be able to offer specialized rooms for different types of patients, but also aims to provide faster care so patients do not need to wait for their studies. Patel also said the new location on CPRMC’s campus is better situated for patients who typically get seen by physicians at the medical center. The regular sleep department office—for appointments other than sleep studies—is already located at the Cedar Park hospital, so the move brings all operations on-site. Sometimes, the patients will be scheduled for a second study, this time with the treatment in place, such as a Continuous Positive Airway Pressure machine, which opens up airways while the wearer sleeps. Other times Patel said the sleep center can conduct the diagnostic test and treatment test in the same night. “We got to figure out how much pressure it’s going to take to open up their airway and eliminate the sleep apnea the patient is going through,” Patel said. “So then we can prescribe the proper machine and proper treatment for them.”