Gardner Audiologists provide a lot of second opinions about hearing aids that were purchased outside of our practice. For instance, I recently evaluated a patient with good quality national brand hearing aids who was unhappy with his 4 month old instruments even though he had returned to his provider on numerous occasions for adjustments.
I tested his hearing and then evaluated his benefit from hearing aids with a tool called Live Speech Mapping. Essentially this is an instantaneous visual measurement how a person hears speech with hearing aids. I clearly saw why he was unhappy with his aids. His right ear was very under amplified for key speech sounds and his left aid was too loud at several frequencies. He was astounded that we both could see the problems with this measurement tool and now he understood why he was unhappy.
In 15 minutes I had identified his problems and corrected them by reprogramming the prescription in his aids. If his hearing healthcare professional had used Live Speech Mapping to fit those aids it would have saved him numerous office visits and given him a better outcome. All of our hearing aid fittings and adjustments are accomplished with this tools.
Even though Consumer Reports strongly recommends that a person have hearing aids fitted with Live Speech Mapping or its equivalent a small percentage of hearing healthcare professionals use it.
Live Speech Mapping lowers the patient’s costs by avoiding unnecessary follow up appointments and travel costs, thereby promoting greater patient satisfaction. Live Speech Mapping is an innovation in the hearing aid fitting process that helps audiologists and their patients by “getting it right the first time”.
