Anita V. Shelgikar, MD, MHPE, completed her term as president of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM) board of directors on Monday, June 15, during the AASM annual membership meeting, which took place in Baltimore as part of the SLEEP 2026 annual meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies (APSS).
This is an excerpt from the remarks that she presented during the membership meeting.
Remarks by Dr. Anita V. Shelgikar
Now, it is my privilege to share with you the report of the Academy president. In the last 12 months, we have built on the momentum of last year’s successes, taken on new challenges, and continued to move our mission forward at a time when sleep medicine matters more than ever. As you listen today, I hope you’ll sense both the pride I feel in what we’ve accomplished, and the optimism I hold for where we are headed. I’d like to take a few minutes to highlight the key efforts that are positioning our field, and the Academy, for continued strength, growth, and service.
As an organization, we recently marked the AASM’s 50th anniversary — a meaningful milestone that reflects decades of collaboration, innovation, and growth in sleep medicine. While it is important to honor that history, our focus today is firmly on the present and the future. The opportunities and challenges before us underscore just how essential our work has become — for patients, health systems, and public health more broadly.
One of the most visible signs of the field’s vitality is the continued engagement of our community. Each year, clinicians, researchers, technologists, educators, and industry partners come together through Academy meetings, educational programs, and volunteer leadership. This engagement reflects not only growth in numbers, but also the interconnected nature of sleep medicine. The Academy remains committed to serving as a professional home for this diverse community.
Workforce Development
Among our highest priorities is workforce development. Across the country, members continue to navigate persistent workforce pressures, even as demand for sleep care grows. Supporting a strong, sustainable workforce is foundational to the future of our field.
In December, we reached an important milestone on Match Day. A total of 208 physicians matched into sleep medicine fellowship programs for the 2026 appointment year — the highest number to date. More than 100 of them joined us here in Baltimore over the weekend for our Fellow Bootcamp. This growth reflects increasing interest in our specialty and affirms the relevance of sleep medicine within the broader healthcare landscape. At the same time, it highlights the responsibility we share to support fellows, program directors, and training programs as practice models evolve and expectations change.
Workforce development goes far beyond the physician pipeline alone. The ongoing shortage of sleep technologists continues to affect practices nationwide, with real implications for access to care, operational efficiency, and quality. Addressing this shortage requires long-term, coordinated strategies in education, recruitment, and retention. The Academy remains actively engaged in efforts to support technologists and strengthen training pathways that sustain the delivery of high-quality sleep care.
These workforce developments are paying dividends. The number of U.S. physicians with active board certification in sleep medicine has increased by more than 5% since 2023. While these numbers are encouraging, the Academy is also developing collaborative relationships with other professional associations to help improve sleep care in primary care settings and in other specialties.
We are also focused on supporting advanced practice providers and the entire sleep team. Programs such as ASTEP reflect our commitment to inclusive workforce development and to equipping all members of the sleep team with the education and resources they need to practice effectively.
Supporting members also means addressing the administrative challenges that affect daily practice. We developed the Prior Authorization Toolkit to address a challenge many of you deal with regularly. The toolkit brings together guidance, templates, and resources aimed at reducing administrative burden and helping practices operate more efficiently.
We also released the Sleep Medicine Claims Denial Navigation Guide, a practical tool that helps clinicians and teams prevent denials, respond effectively when they occur, and optimize reimbursement across the practice revenue cycle. This resource offers sleep medicine-specific examples to improve reimbursement outcomes and operational efficiency. The toolkit and guide are available online as free member resources.
Clinical Guidance
Alongside workforce development, advancing evidence-based clinical guidance remains at the core of the Academy’s mission. Over the past year, the Academy released multiple clinical practice guidelines addressing some of the most pressing challenges facing clinicians today. These provided guidance on the treatment of central sleep apnea, the management of obstructive sleep apnea in adults hospitalized for medical care, the use of combination therapy for chronic insomnia disorder, and the management of shift work disorder.
We have several new clinical practice guidelines in development now. Two that are approaching completion are an update on the use of home sleep apnea tests in the pediatric population, and a focused update on diagnostic testing for sleep apnea in adults. Other guidelines that are in progress will address a broad range of important topics. These guidelines reflect both the complexity of modern sleep medicine and the Academy’s commitment to rigor, transparency, and clinical relevance. These documents remain among the Academy’s most meaningful contributions to improving patient care and supporting clinical decision making.
The Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine continues to play a central role in disseminating this work and advancing the science of sleep. Under the leadership of Dr. Safwan Badr, who began his term as editor in chief in January 2025, the journal has continued to evolve and grow. The Academy’s publishing services agreement with Springer Nature supports broader visibility and global dissemination of JCSM content, while maintaining the journal’s editorial independence and scientific integrity. Members continue to receive full access to the journal as a benefit of membership, ensuring widespread access to trusted, peer-reviewed research.
Alongside the journal, we continue to expand how we share trusted information with broader audiences. The Talking Sleep podcast, hosted by Dr. Seema Khosla, extends our educational reach beyond traditional formats. This spring, Talking Sleep hit a big milestone when it reached half a million downloads. Some of the most popular recent episodes have compared hypoglossal nerve stimulators and explored concerns about microplastics for patients using PAP therapy. I encourage you to subscribe if you haven’t already.
Sleep Medicine Advocacy
Advocacy remains another cornerstone of the Academy’s work. Over the past year, the Academy has engaged actively at the federal level to support policies that advance sleep health, strengthen the sleep field, and protect patient access to care. Fixing Medicare reimbursement continues to be a top priority for the Academy and our members. The Academy is advocating for three bills that have been introduced in Congress. These bills would address the problem of budget neutrality adjustments, delay implementation of work RVU efficiency adjustments, and provide an annual inflationary update for the Medicare physician fee schedule. If these issues are important to you as well, I encourage you to visit the Action Center on the AASM website, where you can easily contact your legislators.
Payer advocacy has been a particularly important area of focus. The Academy worked to address policy changes that would have negatively affected the delivery of sleep services. Our efforts prompted Cigna to pause an automatic downcoding policy that would have undervalued sleep medicine services. Our work also contributed to UnitedHealthcare delaying a restrictive remote patient monitoring policy change. The Academy also expressed concerns related to durable medical equipment fulfillment and a Wellmark policy affecting sleep study reimbursement. Telemedicine remains essential to access for many patients, and the Academy has continued to urge federal agencies to protect telehealth flexibilities that support high quality, accessible sleep care. Behind the scenes, our health policy and advocacy teams continue to advocate for long-term, bipartisan solutions related to reimbursement stability, prior authorization reform, and coverage policies that reflect clinical realities.
In April, members participated in the Academy’s annual Hill Day. They met with congressional offices to advance priorities such as physician reimbursement, permanent standard time, prior authorization reform, and the expansion of funding for residencies in rural areas. These conversations are essential to ensuring that sleep medicine has a strong voice at the policy table. We also are investing in the future of advocacy by participating in the American Academy of Neurology’s Palatucci Advocacy Leadership Forum, gaining insights that will help shape advocacy training opportunities for our members.
Strategic Initiatives
This year we also advanced several strategic initiatives with direct relevance to clinical practice. Among the most substantial of our efforts is the home sleep apnea testing code change application that we submitted to the AMA CPT Editorial Panel. The current code structure no longer fully reflects the diversity and complexity of technologies in use today. Devices differ in the parameters they measure and in their application across sleep disorders, and many extend beyond the diagnosis of OSA. The proposed code set better aligns coding with contemporary clinical practice and is intended to support fair and appropriate reimbursement. These recommendations have been forwarded from the AMA to CMS for potential implementation in January 2027. We anticipate sharing additional details when the physician fee schedule proposed rule is released this summer. This work reflects years of sustained collaboration and thoughtful input from across the sleep community.
Advancing women’s sleep health has also been a significant priority. The Academy launched a women’s sleep health initiative and convened a task force led by Dr. Suzie Bertisch to examine sex and gender-specific factors affecting sleep across the lifespan. In November, the task force hosted a Women’s Sleep Health Summit that brought together patients, clinicians, researchers, and industry representatives to assess gaps and opportunities in research, care, and education. Findings from the summit will be published soon and will help inform future initiatives, including clinical guidance, advocacy, and educational programming. This spring, the task force also hosted a four- part webinar series focused on women’s sleep health and sleep disorders.
Obesity management within sleep medicine continues to evolve rapidly. Following FDA approval of tirzepatide for adults with obesity and moderate to severe OSA, clinicians have navigated new questions related to patient selection, long-term management, monitoring, and insurance coverage. At the same time, investigational therapies and novel oral treatments for OSA highlight the pace of innovation in this space. An Academy task force led by Dr. Tim Morgenthaler has been working to clarify clinical guidance and convene stakeholders to support members as practice expectations continue to shift. These efforts extend to national collaborations, including the Academy’s role as a champion of Obesity Care Week, working alongside more than 140 organizations to raise awareness of obesity, its treatment, and access to care.
The Academy has also introduced new tools to support members clinically and operationally. This year marked the launch of PLATO, a patient reported outcome tool that helps assess symptom burden and treatment response in adults with OSA. PLATO can be licensed for free use in clinical practice, and it supports longitudinal monitoring of patient-reported outcomes.
Professional Education
Professional education remains central to the Academy’s mission. This fall, the Academy is hosting a weekly study club and a one-day review course to help sleep physicians prepare for the board certification and MOC exam. We also offer an on-demand Sleep Medicine Essentials course and the Sleep Qs study tool. These events and resources provide a variety of learning formats and options in preparation for the Nov. 10 exam.
Flagship educational programs, including Sleep Medicine Trends, continue to evolve to meet member needs, offering opportunities to strengthen both clinical expertise and practice management skills. Please save the date and make plans to join us next February near Las Vegas for Sleep Medicine Trends 2027!
As we look ahead, the Academy remains focused on supporting sleep physicians, strengthening the workforce, advancing evidence-based care, and advocating for policies that sustain our field.
Collaboration and Leadership
None of this work would be possible without the dedication of our volunteer members. The Academy continues to benefit from an extraordinary level of engagement across committees, task forces, assemblies, and work groups. 2026 marks the second consecutive year in which the Academy achieved a 100% placement rate for people who applied to volunteer. Earlier this year, 117 members volunteered to serve, which is a 36% increase from last year. Every one of those individuals was invited to participate, either as a committee member or as a strategic ambassador. This level of interest reflects a deep commitment among our members to help shape the work of the Academy and advance our shared priorities. Simply put, the Academy couldn’t do this work without our volunteers. I’m incredibly thankful for your commitment and willingness to get involved.
This work is supported by an outstanding staff at our national office. The Academy’s senior staff and the teams they lead work tirelessly to keep the organization thriving. And this commitment is guided by a board of directors that remains focused on what matters most to our members. It has been an honor to collaborate with such dedicated colleagues in advancing the Academy’s mission and vision.
Conclusion
As my term as Academy president comes to a close, I’d like to thank my family — at home and at work — for their unfailing support and encouragement this year. Most importantly, I thank each of you, my fellow AASM members, for the care you provide, the expertise you share, and the many ways you help the Academy to advance sleep medicine. I’m grateful for your partnership and optimistic about the future we are creating together.
We have built momentum together, and I am confident that we are well positioned for the future. Serving as your president has been one of the most gratifying, defining, and meaningful experiences in my life. Thank you for placing your trust in me and for allowing me to serve our American Academy of Sleep Medicine.
