Costco vs Audiologist

While the Pinna provides directionality not all canal aids have the ability to adjust like a BTE/RIC aid with their combined four mic array decoding directionality. Typically, you need to go to the largest canal aids to get this benefit. The result will be more occluded for the wearer. This may not be the case with the BTE style aids.

I think one can structure payment method to encourage acting in best interest of patient. Salary with no bonuses based on sales (perhaps a bonus for customer satisfaction) encourages acting in best interest of patient. Commission basis does not.

Just read another post from OP. He chose high end hearing aid and Oticon specifically.

@MDB said:

Salary with no bonuses based on sales (perhaps a bonus for customer satisfaction) encourages acting in best interest of patient.

My take is, that use to be so, but not so much any more. Take the salaried bank employee, regardless of position, who, when dealing with the public, is nonverbally “encouraged” to push product with the only bonus being job life expectancy.

There is that. One is unlikely to get the advice to go somewhere else.

Benefit will be based on loss. Open Fit uses the aid and the ear itself. Not all people can benefit from that but those with a milder loss would.

I’m a skeptic. Most practitioners are in business for themselves. Being in business is to make money…DUH!. Best interests comes SECOND. If an Audie like those in Costco work as salaried employees the scenario is a bit different. An Audie is a Tech, some are good and others not so good. I could go on but I’m sure you get the idea.

@KenP said:

Not all people can benefit from that but those with a milder loss would.

And with good low-frequency response. I think that’s a big limitation of open-fit, that you can’t be too deficient in the lower frequencies.

@z10user2 said:

Neville may have some ideals that would suggest he follows himself but the skeptic in me would think that money rules all in business.

Eh, but I am priviledged to be able to do so. I work for someone else and I don’t work on commission, so all that business stuff is out of my hands. Sure that’s by design, but if I were business minded, who knows that I wouldn’t need to find myself a shorter horse.

@MDB said:

But the recommendation feels strange. I can’t think of a good analogy so I won’t confuse matters with it, but the juxtaposition of recommending only one hearing aid combined with recommending one of the highest priced hearing aids out there seems odd and makes me consider motivation.

To be fair, if you are doing a unilateral fit the Opn is a nice choice because it’s advanced processing is based on a unilateral strategy versus a lot of manufactuers whose top level binaural processing would be lost with a unilateral fit. As to why the Opn 1 is recommended over the 2 or the 3. . . it’s “better”? In my direct experience there is a bit of a difference between the 1 and the 3.

IIRC, most pinna cues are above about 5 kHz. With high frequency hearing loss, you’re already losing them.

@Waynetc said:

What I am beginning to wonder is if it is a matter of $. Not the money that I’ll pay out, but perhaps because of how good my wife’s benefits package is with the hospital (major / very large / mult-isite system) that they decided to provide one OPN1 (my OOP is 1250.00 plus a little more for the rechargable ver.) to start me off with. hmmm

If I had this kind of insurance coverage where my OOP is only $1250 per OPN 1 hearing aid, I would not hesitate to shell out $1250 OOP for the other one.

If anything, I’d skimp out on the rechargeable version. But if I only have to pay a smaller percentage to get the rechargeable version, I’d seriously consider it, too.

Remember, your hearing loss usually can only get worse as you age. So it’d be good insurance to have that second one in case your left hearing worsens in the future, while you still have good insurance (pun intended). After all, it’s already not as good as before and for sure it’s not going to get better.

If you’re going to spend the money then use them. I wouldn’t just “park” them. Technology changes too. Get what you need for what’s available now. If you were to park them then when comes time that you decide to aid the left then you might have different options available to you. Whereas now…you can aid both sides properly.
IMHO.

There has been some post recently where the poster tried out both the OPN 1 and the KS8 from Costco and they like the OPN 1 better, BUT not for the $3000 better for the difference that they’d have had to pay between the 2 pairs. But they said that if it’d only been $1K difference, they would have gone for the OPN 1. Of course their hearing loss is different than yours so there’s no telling how applicable that situation is for you.

But you do have the opportunity here to get a very premium pair of hearing aids for only $900 more than the KS8, which is a very competent aid itself by the way.

If I were you, I’d just try out a pair of OPN 1 first and not bother with the KS8, because like you said, it’d be pretty overwhelming to try out 2 pairs of hearing aids in parallel. Only if you’re not happy with the OPN 1 for some reason, or only if you’re intensely curious on how the KS8 compares to see if it would be worth the $900 difference or not, would I want to try out the KS8.

If you’re still fixed on going for the rechargeable option, I don’t think the KS8 has that option, although others may correct me if I’m wrong.

@z10user2 said:

If you’re going to spend the money then use them. I wouldn’t just “park” them. Technology changes too. Get what you need for what’s available now. If you were to park them then when comes time that you decide to aid the left then you might have different options available to you. Whereas now…you can aid both sides properly.
IMHO.

I totally agree with this. After all, you DO have some hearing loss on your left ear. Why not try to correct it if you have a premium aid available for use.

If you look at my hearing loss on my right ear, I have up to 40 dB loss between 250 and 750 Hz. When I take my hearing aids out, I immediately notice the loss in my right ear at those frequencies compared to my left ear at those frequencies.

A 40 dB loss is of noticeable significance, even if it’s termed mild in the hearing loss world. In my opinion, a 40 dB loss is worth having correction applied. It may seem fine in simple listening environment, but in complex listening environment where there’s a lot of noise, you’ll need all the help you can get.

Consider this as well. Even for a normal hearing person in a noisy, complex listening environment, it IS challenging to them as well, not just for us hearing impaired folks. If they had an easy solution to help clarify speech in a noisy situation, wouldn’t they want to utilize it? Of course wearing hearing aids to them is NOT an easy solution. But wearing hearing aids to YOU is already a given because you’ve already have to for at least one ear. So if wearing a hearing aid on the other marginally good ear as well is an easy solution (because you already have it) and will give you an edge in noisy situations as well, wouldn’t you want to utilize it?

Could also possibly check the price on a pair of OPN 3 vs the single OPN 1 if money is an issue? Only way you’re ever going to tell the difference though is to try. I routinely recommend a cheaper single unit pair Vs a single, more expensive aid if a patient has a set budget and is unsure whether to proceed monaurally vs. binaurally. Personally, I feel I this provides better overall results for my patients and happy patients = a more sucessful clinic in the long run.