Buying aids from an independent audiologist clinic vs an ENT office?

I use an independent audiology office and they, too, wanted to sell me aids at what would have been roughly the price at an ENT office. I do business with an on-line retailer who has a relationship with the Indy office I use. The audiologist was new and not aware I used the outside firm. They promptly said by all means, buy from the online outfit, have them sent here and we’ll get them programmed. This practice works with the online firm, but would be very happy to sell them at the ENT price if they could. I just made sure they knew I knew I could do better elsewhere.

You may get a bit longer bit of post purchase service with the ENT office, but I have found that the post-purchase follow up for warranty and reprogramming/adjusting to be just fine. I ultimately will have to pay for some services down the line but I still come out way, way, way ahead financially dealing with the online retailer and an affiliated audiologist.

Oh, yeah. I paid the online retail their full price, about $2500 less than an ENT or my audiologist practice, and they then promptly filed for the insurance rebate for me. I actually had the insurance reimbursement check in hand before the new aids arrived at the audiology shop largely because I was catching the cusp of a new Oticon offering and it took some time between when I placed the order and when the new units were formally released! If you go the online route, the outfit I used and am very happy with is Ziphearing.com15 … there are other firms which operate the same way as well and I’m sure you’ll find folks here who have dealt with those as well.

reading between the lines it seems like you might have experience that an ENT office charged more?

I will add here that there is often one, kind of similar, but different place to go.

After getting crap hearing out of expensive aids from local stores, audi office tied in sellers, etc I went searching for an alternative.

To my benefit(?) I knew I was probably due for at least one Cochlear implant.

I managed to get accepted to the ENT clinic at Mayo Clinic in Rochester MN, which is the flagship place for Mayo. Long wait and a million hoops to go through, but worth all it 10X over.

I got a 4 hour comprehensive hearing evaluation from an Audi that does almost only those testings and was extremely good at it and thorough. Results were one ear just qualified for Cochlear and one almost did. For a final test she programmed per her data a pair of mid grade OTE aids with just foam earpiece fits. Then I was tested or word recognition and did noticeably better. She said I MAY want to consider trying some good hearing aids on a trial period to see if they would be worth buying. I next went to the ENT the same day and he agreed with the Audi about one Cochlear and said he was fine with hearing aid trial as it might be enough to buy time until both ears could go Cochlear and could get the hearing therapy at the same time, a big benefit.

Mayo does have an audiology clinic that fits hearing aids, and will do any brand and model you want. Full retail like any audi would charge, 3 year warranty, free parts like domes or wax gaurds, free followup visits, so a much better setup than I had ever run across.

Fitting Audi was a PHD in Audiology and very experienced in fitting. Did all the right fitting things like real ear readings and such. I wound up with Resound Nexia 9 size 13 battery aids with earmolds as they would also work with Cochlear if I only got on Cochlear. The results were hugely different and far better than anything I had gotten anywhere else. Since it was an all day drive for appointments for me, and I had over 15 years of self programming on other aids, I asked if she was OK with me tweaking so I could do real time testing at home at at the noisy places I often go to and she thought that was fine. I keep her informed what I am doing and the changes made and she learns along with me what works the best for me. I have done around 50 different combinations of features and programs and tested them. What I have found does best is not what either of us thought would be best, but now I hear very well compared to even the original fitting, don’t use the mini mic at all anymore in our noisy RV or noisy places, and only the TV gives me some difficulty now sometimes. I hope to get several years of good use before it is time for Cochlear on both sides.

Bottom line is if you can find a major research hospital/clinic you are likely to have access to the best of the best Audis and ENTs. At Mayo, they all have lots of research papers published and continuously are doing cutting edge research. Almost feel like I won the lottery sometimes.

Honestly, 4 hours of testing? I’m glad you had the time for it.

I appreciate that this might seem trite, but even with full REM and soundfield evaluation we’d be struggling to make 1 hour 30m.

Perhaps there’s some lengthy stuff they do that needs a lot of set-up, but I think that’s a heck of a long fitting.

Yep, it is a 4 hour appointment, but of course not all of it is in the listening room, there is some discussion and recap time in their. The actual fitting was at a later appointment so not included in the evaluation appointment but the fitting one did not need to do any real testing except after programming and installing and a resonance/response test.

I can tell you that keeping concentration on listening for the long periods of time was difficult and exhausting, which they know and tell you it is going to be hard up front. There are breaks, also, a couple of times. I don’t know how many tests or what they would called, but they did seem to go on forever. Lots of different voices from male to child, different sentences and words for all of them, different speaker placements for full 360 degrees and angles, with and with many different kinds of noise overlaid.

I think, to me, the proof of if it was worth it was at the fitting when they were programmed and put in. The only test done then was for resonance primarily and two ranges were adjusted for that. I heard surprisingly well right out of the door with them and that had never happened in the past with any audi or fitting specialist.

After all my home tweaking and testing, my gain curves are still very similar to the original programming and initial tweaks with mainly compression changes to balance loud and soft. I actually wish I could get more than 3.0 compression the programming allows for certain frequency ranges. Different microphone settings, especially the auto directionality ones, do make for some gain curve necessities, though.

Where I was able to make the biggest gains in hearing quality was mostly related to the multitude of “automatic” features available. Lots of directionality, noise canceling, ear to ear transfer, spacial effects, etc so very many combinations available. What I found was that there was a lot of conflict between them and also that they could pretty easily get fooled by quickly varying, or unusual situations, especially if more than one them was on. The most stunning of them showed up while riding my bicycle of all places. They were set for “front focus”, moderate noise reduction, and with ear to ear communications on. The aids sit just below the helmet edge and the wind does make noise there, it always has with any aids in, but with these settings it took the wind noise which is a lower frequency noise as voice it appears, focused on it and amplified it, and then doubled the volume again by ear to ear communication. It was like freight train sound. If I turned off one aid, the noise went to about 1/4 the volume.

I currently am running very well, best ever, with fixed directionality that is said to super or hyper cardoid, low noise reduction, ear to ear communication off. Gains, particular on the low input/high gain curve have been tweaked slightly to match the noise frequencies that seem to interfere with speech for me the most. Cochlear is in the future, but this is certainly usable in the real world pretty well.

On Friday, October 18, 2024 at 02:16:45 AM CDT, Stephen Bright via Hearing Aid Forum - Active Hearing Loss Community no-reply@forum.hearingtracker.com wrote:

It was a CI eval though.

Ahhh. Sorry, missed that.

Fair enough for a full clinical assessment.