Providence Kodiak Island Medical Center has added a permanent in-house sleep lab to study and monitor patients for sleep disorders. Hospital officials said the lab addition meets an on-island need to treat and diagnose sleep disorders on a full-time basis with a full-time staff.

“We feel we’ve really raised the level of service quality and excellence as a result of these changes,” said PKIMC CEO Don Rush.

Before, Rush said PKIMC had sleep technicians who traveled to Kodiak Island periodically. Now the local sleep lab has two full-time staffers, so patients can expect timelier on-island service.

Kodiakans have already taken note of the facility: It’s booked through June and July, with more than 20 users coming in for a one-night stay. The lab hosts three patients a week.

Working the lab is Lisa Pascua and Scott Ferguson, who both trained in Oregon in preparation for the sleep lab. Pascua, who has worked at the hospital for 23 years in a variety of positions, is the neurotechnician. Ferguson, manager of the sleep lab, also works in the hospital’s respiratory therapy department.

“I really saw (Pascua’s) service focus, her attention to detail, how great she was with our patients,” Ferguson said. “When she applied, we were really blessed in the interview to roll her into this new role. She’s really excelled and taken off.”

Pascua, also a Tagalog interpreter, said she is excited to help patients.

“This is what I like to do. The differential, working days and nights, I thought it was going to bother me, but it’s exciting with different cases and different patients. You get to know your patients very well, too.”

The sleep lab is a room on the third floor of the hospital. It features a private bathroom, television, DVD player and Tempur-Pedic bed with massage capability. Ferguson said the premium bed will help the sleep lab’s results better than a normal hospital bed.

“A patient in a hospital bed, you don’t get that good, comfortable night’s stay where you can get a good diagnostic study,” Ferguson said. “We try to mimic what they do normally at home, and normally at home they have a comfortable bed.”

Ferguson said patients entering the lab can expect to first meet with the staff downstairs at the lobby. There, they are greeted and taken upstairs for a quick tour of the room and told what they can expect for the night.

After patients finish paperwork, Ferguson or Pascua attach a variety of equipment that monitors aspects like brain waves, heart rate and heart rhythm, oxygen saturation and breathing. Breathing is monitored on a CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) machine.

Ferguson said some patients are a little apprehensive at first to sleep with the variety of monitoring wires attached to them.

“A lot of patients, their concern is how they actually get to sleep with all this apparatus on them,” Ferguson said. “But eventually they do and they drift off to sleep, and we do a diagnostic with all these cables.”

While the patients are sleeping, Pascua or Ferguson is outside the room, about 25 yards away, in a second room with computers. The sleep lab has an audio-video camera right above the bed for monitoring.

“If we have to intervene … to address sleep apena, it’s technician-attended,” Ferguson said. “So it’s one-on-one, and that’s our service focus.”

The hospital needs at least six hours of documented sleep for a viable study — a standard set by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, Ferguson said. Once documented, PKIMC’s Dr. Bill Lucht interprets the sleep lab’s data to make recommendations for patients.

Mirror writer Bradley Zint can be reached via e-mail at bzint@kodiakdailymirror.com.