Ears to You

Come Home to better hearing

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What questions should I ask as a new hearing aid shopper?

Well, the first place to go is the FAQ on my website. But for this post I’d like to highlight a concern I became aware of this week. Someone in a local assisted living facility lost one of her hearing aids which was purchased last year from a local hearing aid dispenser. Her hearing aids are still under the loss warranty, but her dispenser charges 25% of the original purchase price as a loss claim deductible. In this case, it is $787.00.

By way of comparison, I charge a flat fee of $250.00 as a loss claim deductible. Now maybe the manufacturer this dispenser works with charges way more to replace a hearing aid than the manufacturers I work with, but I doubt it. So here’s another question to ask when you shop for hearing aids: How much do you charge if I lose an aid while under warranty?

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Is your audiologist stuck in the past?

I spoke with a gentleman yesterday who told me about his visit to an audiologist. This man had a complaint of difficulty when listening to speech in a background of noise. This was his only complaint. The audiologist tested him and declared his hearing normal. What’s wrong with this picture? The audiologist was either not willing or not able to address this man’s complaint.

Further questioning revealed that he was tested using speech and tones in quiet. There was no speech in noise testing. Recorded test materials that contain speech in noise have been widely available for more than a decade. The most commonly used speech in noise test is quick to administer and is not expensive. Yet some audiologists still restrict their protocols to testing in quiet.

The moral to this story is that patients need to learn as much as possible about their hearing test and how it relates to their complaints. Speech in noise testing is a routine part of the protocol at Ears to You.

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Wait for it….

The Crossings on the Peninsula has asked me to share information from my profession with the public on August 23 and September 20. Both talks are planned for 2:00 PM. The Crossings is located at 3540 Victory Blvd. in Yorktown, VA. They provide assisted living and memory care for seniors. The public is invited to the talks.

The first talk is entitled “Hearing, Listening, and the Brain – Part 1.”

Topics include:

  • Effects of hearing loss on emotions, behavior, and relationships
  • The connection between hearing difficulty and falls risk in seniors
  • Medical options for better hearing
  • Strategies for better communication

The second talk is entitled “Hearing, Listening, and the Brain – Part 2.”

Topics include:

  • How modern hearing technology can work with your brain
  • PSAPs, hearables, & hearing aids: what’s the difference?
  • How to navigate the hearing care marketplace

I expect some questions from the first audience may touch on issues I’ll address in the second talk. To these questions I’ll give brief answers that I hope will satisfy, but for the most part they’ll have to wait for it.

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“To a man with a hammer…”

One of the problems with specialties in healthcare is that we tend to focus on our particular area of expertise (hearing in my case) to the exclusion of other patient problem areas. In recognition of this, I’m trying to pay attention to other needs the patient may have and provide appropriate referrals. I’m used to referring to physicians and physician specialties such as ENT, however, one non-physician specialty that came up recently was physical therapy.

An article in one of my journals looked at the possibility of associations between hearing loss, postural control, and mobility in older adults. It seems that severity of hearing loss is connected with a higher prevalence of walking difficulty and falls; that is, increased hearing loss is associated with increased falls risk. If cooperation across professions can reduce both hearing loss and falls risk, I’m all for it. So I’m working on a relationship with a local physical therapy firm, with the goal of enabling treatment for the whole person.

For those who don’t recognize the saying in the title of the post, it is “To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”