Sound Financial Inventment

There are very few programs available to a trucking company that upon implementation with their employees will show real, tangible financial savings. Even fewer programs can show a return on investment within the first year of an implementation. Deciding to implement a program focused on educating, detecting and treating your drivers for sleep apnea is one of those unique opportunities. In fact, with the ability to see an ROI of over 400% per driver in the first year alone it may be one of the greatest investments you can make into your driving force. The savings that can be realized come in four major areas:

The Cost to Test/Treat a Driver. Let’s go ahead and get one this straight from the beginning.. Having a program dedicated to testing and treating sleep apnea within your fleet will not all of the sudden cause all of your drivers to need a sleep test and/or increase any costs to you. The whole point of having a dedicated program is COST SAVINGS over what you would be, or are already spending by not having a program AND to provide you with better results. The final decision on whether a driver will need a test and treatment for sleep apnea or not still rests with your DOT Physician.

That said, in order to test and treat a driver through conventional methods and using medical insurance billed rates can be extremely expensive and take longer than you would expect. The process can take 5-8 office visits, 1-3 nights in a sleep lab and leave you with a treatment device that is not compatible with the trucking lifestyle and provides no realistic means of compliance tracking. All of this can take months of waiting for open appointments for an average price tag of over $4,000 - 8,000 per treated driver.

What we provide is a program created by the trucking industry for truckers. We have pre-negotiated pricing for all services within our Sleep Access Network of providers and provide every component of the process on the same flat rate. This means that no matter where you or your drivers are in the country you can be sure that you are paying one of the industry’s lowest prices for services and saving over 50% from the lowest average insurance industry 'discounted' costs.

Healthcare Savings. Several independent studies, including studies conducted by the FMCSA and ATRI, have concluded the average healthcare savings realized by having a Sleep Apnea program to be $538 - $572 per treated driver per month. This savings represents direct, real dollar healthcare savings derived from an increase in metabolic function and an overall increase in well being of the treated driver. This means for every one of your drivers that is treated for OSA you may experience direct healthcare savings of over $6,800 per year.

Increase Driver Retention. These same studies have shown trucking companies who implement a program dedicated to Sleep Apnea within their fleets have experienced a 55% greater retention rate among those drivers undergoing treatment as opposed to the general driving population. This could be attributed to the fact that these drivers feel the company has shown a real interest in helping them to attain their newly rejuvenated level of health. If your fleet spends an average of $5,000 per driver on recruitment and retention this translates to a savings of $2,750 per year per treated driver. With the current and increasing driver shortage, this could turn out to be an invaluable number for your fleet.

Reduced Accident Costs. The independent studies conducted by the FMCSA and the ATRI have highlighted the potential of a program focused on sleep apnea in trucking to significantly reduce exposure to costs associated with accidents. These reports have highlighted a potential reduction in accidents of 30% with a cost per accident reduction of 48% across the entire fleet. These savings may stem from the increased awareness displayed by a driver whose rest is uninhibited by sleep apnea symptoms. A low number for this savings has been pegged at around $2,700 per treated driver. But the saving from this category go well beyond mere financial benefits. Saving accidents means saving lives. If having a sleep apnea program in your trucking company means avoiding one major accident then the savings is immeasurable.

Source for the statistics quoted in this page are found in FMCSA Publication No. FMCSA-RT-04-007.