Date of Award

2002

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Masters in Health Management

First Advisor

Marilyn Patterson

Second Advisor

Rita Kottmeyer

Third Advisor

Suzanne M. Nordstrom

Abstract

For the greater than one million Americans who rely on supplemental oxygen for survival, the vast majority of them struggle with ambulatory oxygen sources which restrict their ability to move freely about within and out of their homes. Liquid oxygen sources can provide the smallest and longest lasting ambulatory oxygen supply. However, the cost of the provision on liquid oxygen has historically been cost prohibitive under our current Medicare reimbursement schedule. The HELiOS™ Oxygen System by Puritan-Bennett a division of Mallinckrodt. has developed an oxygen system, which allows for the smallest, lightest weight and longest lasting oxygen system ever developed. This system was a]so designed with special considerations for reducing the cost of provision and therefore, more acceptable in today's restraints on Medicare reimbursement.

This study was designed to examine the potential issue of the HELiOS product to effectively oxygenate patients during hours of sleep. In addition, it will discuss the philosophical issues of compliance with oxygen therapy orders when oxygen sources are provided which significantly reduce quality of life issues for the patient. This research showed that of a small sample of 19 subjects, 63% ( 12 subjects) experienced saturations that were not clinically significantly different from that which they experienced on their current continuous oxygen flow source. Collective data in a two-tailed t-test resulted in a p value of= 0.00 I, indicating that there is a statistically significant, high probability that the saturation of a randomly chosen oxygen therapy patient's oxygen saturation would not be clinical equal to that of the same patient on continuous now oxygen. Therefore, this researcher would recommend an overnight oximetry be performed for most all patients who will be converting from continuous flow oxygen to the HELiOS Demand Flow Oxygen System during hours of sleep.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

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