For years I went to Costco for all of my hearing aid needs. Recently after going on Medicare, I have a plan that pays for hearing aids. Not at Costco however. Aetna contracts with a company called Nations Hearing. First year I received at no cost to me base line Resounds, which is the brand that I normally use. They were a great replacement for my 5 year old battery Resounds. These are rechargeable. This year I received the top of the line Resounds, however I decided to pay a minimal upcharge fee.
This Audiologist does not do which I feel is important. All he has is the old sound booth that he plays tones. No masking, nothing. Am I spoiled by Costco or is REM and other tests needed? I check with my HAS at Costco and they no longer sell Resound. He offered to test my hearing again, since I am due. I feel I am not getting the full benefits of my new Resounds.
Sorry for to disagree @25Firefighter , but @jay_man2 has given you the exact information you need so that you can have your Resounds properly fitted at Costco. You should find his input valuable.
Whether other testing is “necessary” is a judgement call. If your loss has always been sensorineural with no conductive loss and you’re not complaining of significant changes in your hearing, there’s no benefit to masking that I know of. is considered best practices, but there’s nothing magical about it. If your hearing loss is similar to what it was last time and your new hearing aids have similar amounts of gain to the old ones, I’d doubt you’d see much benefit to REM. Do share your hearing challenges with your audiologist and if not getting satisfactory assistance, consider returning aids if possible. You can always try to get another audiologist to adjust them, but that can be quite challenging.
The Jabra aids that Costco sells are very similar to Resound aids. However, Costco will not adjust your Resound aids for you. They could sell you a pair of Jabra aids and do their standard fitting practices with them.
It’s been mentioned that they won’t do this, only the ones they sell, bit like they won’t sell you any accessories unless you brought the from them as well.
My understanding is that they will only deal with product purchased from them. The only hard example I have is a PartnerMic purchased elsewhere that they would have nothing to do with.
They are a simple retailer and all they care about is their retail. As far as helping a client hear better and patient well being, they are not paid for that. It may sound crude but facts are facts. I asked them to read a Phonak hearing aid my neighbor had and check the settings of the Brio he bought from them against his old aid, they would not/could not do that. Simple retailer!
Is finding a different provider within the Nations Hearing network an option? Perhaps you can call ahead and ask about before.
@gorgeguy , as far as I know, the majority of audiologists won’t service not purchased directly from them either, so I don’t think that concept applies just to Costco. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Correct me if I’m wrong but he said his Medicare insurance didn’t cover hearing aids purchased through Costco. Now I don’t know if it does or not but if that’s the case then shelling out $3000 in cash may not be practical
@25Firefighter: I’m sorry - I don’t have a clue what you are accusing me of. It doesn’t matter anyway, since Costco won’t be able to adjust your aids, as I thought they might, at the time I posted.
Most audiologists or will work with aids they did not fit, they will just charge you for their services. It is important that they are very familiar with the brand of aids, if they are not they will probably refuse to work on them.
Back to 25Firefighter’s original question, I feel is very important (assuming the practitioner really knows how to use it). Best practices call for “Validation and Verification” REM helps validate the fitting and or or similar will help verify the fitting. You may be happy without the use of REM but until it is done you don’t know how much happier you could be if REM is used properly.
Gus Mueller (a very well known audiologist) compared validation and verification to baking cookies. Validation is making sure you followed the recipe. Verification is when you take a bite out of the cookie to make sure it tastes good.
My audiologist didn’t use with my fitting/set-up… At first I wondered about this sort of thing…and somewhere along the line I learned about REM. I thought it seemed like a very plausible thing to call a “best practice”. As an engineer by schooling verifying performance when tweaking settings is kinda necessary…
I asked my audiologist the next time I was there, about REM. Her answer…more or less… was basically that verification depends on the goal really…and that’s true in this case anyway. The primary goal of the aids might be better understanding of speech, with secondary goals of things like hearing music, or hearing ambient noises. So by exploring how well I can understand speech, or how natural things in my life sound…or annoying…or whatever I happen to experience… and then by adjusting the settings to optimize, you’ll home in on the right settings.
When I think about the purpose of hearing aids I think that concept seems good. In my experience, after several return visits we were able to pretty much perfect my experience for my own individual needs.
I might still be having trouble understanding my young daughter…so she adjusted something a bit in that range to turn her up. I found that footsteps on carpet were grossly unnatural… change a setting to turn that down a bit…etc…
So… the verification was a continued discussion about my experience.
My audi made a point that REM really becomes more important when the patient can’t really accurately report their experience…like a young kid that either just doesn’t understand or have the words.
In reflecting on the whole experience though, it seems to me that REM would probably be a somewhat useful tool for the initial setting, but in the end I think you still need to go through the other process.
I think about it this way
if my hearing test showed that I have theoretically perfect hearing except at one particular frequency I have a 5.2 loss…and it’s right in the range of something that I want or need to hear or understand
So my aids are supposed to amplify that one frequency exactly 5.2 dB.
REM can verify that in my ear canal the aid is doing exactly as it’s supposed to…5.2dB more in my ear than the sound really is.
but
when listen to that thing I need to hear, it’s wrong…maybe just not quite loud enough for good understanding.
So, the audiologist cranks up the amplification…ultimately landing at 5.8dB…and I report a perfect result.
so did REM really result in hitting the target?
This is all just speculation…and perhaps some logic
I haven’t had the REM experience but I really would like to try…
Northern Virginia
Oticonian/Disposablyte
