Western Sleep Medicine
This Business You Can Really Count On
F
or some people, a good night’s sleep is more a dream than a reality.
In 2006, Mark Schultz and Michael Kearns visited the Scottsbluff office of the Nebraska Business Development Center to discuss their idea for an independent sleep lab to assist physicians in the identification and treatment of sleep disorders. A regional hospital was performing those services, but the delay on those studies was from six to eight weeks. Schultz and Kearns believed they could expedite the service. “We knew about sleep,” Schultz recalls, “but we didn’t know anything about putting together a business proposal. The NBDC helped us define who we were and what we wanted to do.” Three months later, they opened the first Western Sleep Medicine, LLC laboratory. Today, Western Sleep Medicine operates eight laboratories for sleep-related breathing disorders in western Nebraska, eastern Wyoming and southwest South Dakota. The company employs 14 people. The studies they perform include full polysomnography, continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) titration, multiple sleep latency testing and other specialized
