Sleepless in Chicago

June 15, 2007 12:48 PM

I'm looking for information on sleep clinics in or around Chicago.

My whole life I've had sleep issues and I've decided I should try one of those sleep clinics to see if they can resolve them. I'm going to visit the states, specifically Chicago, this summer between the end of august -mid September and I'd like recommendations for a quality clinic in the chicagoland area.

Any insight into how sleep clinics work, their effectiveness and price is very welcome.

posted by sic to health & fitness (6 comments total)

I can't give you an idea about price because my insurance covered it, but the sleep disorders clinic at Northwestern Mem Hospital was most awesome.
posted by jeanmari at 1:05 PM on June 15, 2007

The one associated with Northwestern Memorial Hospital appears to be decent (ie., I have no comparative experience, but the people there were pleasant). My primary doc said they used to be terrible, but have been making a concerted effort to shape up recently.

One night cost me $1400, iirc, and my insurance sorta screwed me over on the bill despite multiple referrals and the like. I ended up having to pay an outside bill examiner to break a few thumbs in order to bring my out-of-pocket expense below $1K. YMMV, but be warned.

Basically, you walk in the Radisson Hotel, and go to a specific floor (7th?). The entire floor is run by the hospital, so there's a little waiting office & the like. You get your own hotel room, which appears normal except for the night-vision cameras on the ceiling, and lots and lots of wiring near the bed.

A nurse hooks you up to a bunch of different sensors, and then you try to sleep. Every so often someone will come in and reconnect a sensor that accidentally came off you in the night.

...then a week or so later, your doc gets the report.

Note, if they decide you need CPAP or something, make sure you've made arrangements for them to try a fix for you on the spot! Otherwise you get a full night of monitoring, and THEN have to go back again for them to adjust CPAP settings, or whatever else is needed. Naturally, that means an extra night of expense.
posted by aramaic at 1:14 PM on June 15, 2007

I went to NMH's sleep clinic at their Radisson Hotel location in early 2005. A few months later, I found I had a bedbug infestation in my apartment.

One of the primary ways of bringing a bedbug infestation to your home is by mistakenly bringing them home from a hotel stay. Another is for them to come from another unit, but my landlord suggested I was the only complainant in the building.

To save myself from a lawsuit, I want to make it clear I don't know for certain the hotel was the source of the bedbugs; it seems, however, the most likely locale I could've contracted them from.

So I would, however, suggest that if you do go to their sleep clinic, you take steps to make sure that your room does not have a bedbug infestation. Regardless of it being owned and used by the hospital, as a hotel room in a major urban center, it is certainly possible the infestation came from there.

I am told that NMH also has in-hospital sleep clinic facilities. Should I ever need to go through further sleep clinic work (pressure adjustment, etc.), I plan to go there and not to the Radisson Hotel location. You may want to take that course of action as well.
posted by WCityMike at 2:09 PM on June 15, 2007

I should clarify that I had my sleep clinic experience with them in-hospital (in a lab with a bed and a one-way mirror) and not at the Radisson location.
posted by jeanmari at 5:35 PM on June 15, 2007

If you have sleep apnea and you're a severe enough case, they'll slap a mask on you mid-study that first night and start titrating you.

Otherwise, you'll want to investigate (if you are looking for the most bang for your buck---and time) the possibility of arranging a split-night protocol. This may only make real medical sense if you are fairly sure they will find evidence of actual sleep apnea (do you have any of the major signs like loud snoring, bed partner subjectively reporting gasping, sounding or feeling like you're choking, etc? are you overweight, have known issues with soft tissues along the airway like your tonsils, soft palate, nasal passages, etc?). If you have something more subtle instead like upper airway resistance syndrome, alpha intrusions, lack of "restorative" sleep stages, etc. then a split night protocol might not make as much sense.
posted by availablelight at 7:29 PM on June 15, 2007

Thanks for your input guys. I'm going to look into the Northwestern Clinic.
posted by sic at 1:50 AM on June 16, 2007