A sleep physician will have to repay Medicare $1.2 million after claiming for hundreds of overnight sleep studies used in a clinically unjustified attempt at “routine” patient screening for sleep apnoea.

The doctor, investigated by the Professional Services Review, was also accused of failing to provide adequate supervision of the sleep technicians.

The watchdog said that, in many cases, his patients’ histories showed they were unlikely to have a high probability of sleep apnoea – or lacked so much detail it was impossible to gauge a probability of sleep apnoea at all.

In addition to COPD diagnoses not being recorded, some patients had “blood pressure” written down as a comorbidity but with no further information provided.