hello humans
welcome back to Dr. Rose Helps You Hear
i'm Stephani Rose and i'm an
audiologist
today i'm going to be discussing how to
not get scammed when buying new hearing
aids
first of all you should never just run
out and decide one day i'm going to get
some hearing aids and then run to a
store and buy some
this is how you get taken advantage of
unfortunately by some unscrupulous
people that are in the industry
make sure that you do a little bit of
background search who is the provider
do they have good reviews you can find
out from a simple search on google or
any search engine or any review
engine like yelp to see what kind of
background these people have before i go
further into the video
i just wanted to say thank you so much
to my 350 plus subscribers
um it's definitely a little milestone
for me so i really appreciate that you
guys are interested in my videos and you
want to be a hearing nerd with me
one of the things that inspired me to do
this video was a couple of points that i
saw
on social media back and forth um just a
couple of hearing loss groups i belonged
to
and some reports that i was seeing from
random consumers out there
and also from audiologists that get
these reports from their patients
so um you have to have
knowledge or at least seek knowledge
about the outcomes
of if you get hearing aids hearing aids
do not solve
all communication issues everybody has a
different
profile of hearing and whether or not
hearing aids are going to help you
should be addressed at your hearing aid
evaluation
and never buy a pair of hearing aids
without getting a diagnostic
hearing test first or at least a
complete hearing test that has air
conduction
bone conduction and speech testing so
that you can see what your word
score is the word score is directly what
tells us about
clarity of speech along the nerve we
turn up the volume to
kind of compensate for the hearing loss
that we just found
while you were clicking a button for
beeps or saying yes or raising your hand
so we turn the volume above
those softest beeps that you hear so
that we can kind of get an idea
of how your nerve behaves and then this
directly translates to how you might do
with a pair of hearing aids or one
hearing aid whichever ear needs a
hearing aid
and if you have hearing loss in both
ears you should get two
um and just because you have a little
bit of hearing loss doesn't necessarily
mean you need hearing aids and there are
guidelines out there
a really common one that we use for our
clinic here is normal hearing through
2000 hertz and then hearing loss is
considered a borderline candidate
but once you hit hearing loss starting
at 2000 hertz
or before 2000 hertz you're a candidate
you should go ahead and start
stimulating your ear nerves also
you want to look up your consumer
guidelines within your state to see what
your rights are when you purchase
hearing aids
i practice in california and in
california you have 45 days from the
time you take home hearing aids
to decide if they're benefiting you and
if for whatever reason you change your
mind
you get every penny back we're not even
supposed to keep any sort of restocking
fee
or charge you for the time so you have
very good protective rights in
california
so make sure you look up your state
guidelines about hearing aid sales
editing dr rose here i took a great
webinar about dementia and hearing loss
yesterday from the
alzheimer's san diego and they had a
great guest
audiologist speaker named dr david ilich
who practices in southern california in
san diego area
so he made the comment that if you
for whatever reason have any qualms
about the fit the fidelity
or the benefit of the hearing aids then
you definitely should not
keep them so take that into account
if they don't fit right if the fidelity
isn't to what you expected or
wish that they would have been or if
you're just not benefiting then it's
time to try
a different sound recipe either by a
different maker a different kind of
hearing aid or probably
even a different provider in some cases
also make sure that you're being
counseled properly on realistic
realistic expectations based on your
hearing profile
if you read something online or in the
newspaper that something cost thirty
dollars and oh my gosh is this terrific
amplifier
terrific hearing aid um if it sounds too
good to be true
it probably is especially with hearing
devices people automatically think of
cost
to determine um how good a hearing aid
is but really
it's about the pro the whole profile how
is your nerve doing
how much hearing loss do you have do you
understand that you need to wear them
every day from the time you wake up to
the time you go to bed for six weeks for
your brain to adjust and really
understand the benefit that you're going
to get from a hearing aid
so there's more to it than just the
device another big component of this is
your
programmer or your audiologist or
hearing care professional
hearing instrument specialist is also
another word um for the
for the people who can dispense hearing
aids so
there is training that's involved
there's education that's involved
it's not just a simple device off of a
shelf it's tailored to your hearing
sensitivity
and it's programmed depending on how
well how you do in background noise
the technology inside of the hearing aid
also helps with those sorts of things so
you should be counseled on why it is
that they're choosing this type of
technology for you
not everybody should get top of the line
not everybody should get a basic
there's also some emerging research out
there that says that there's really
for a certain type of hearing profile
there's really no difference between a
mid-grade and a premium hearing aid
in terms of uh self-perceived benefit so
as long as they're
uh fit accordingly with real your
measures and all of the verification
that should go with that
so lots to learn look at the other
videos in my channel so that you can
educate yourself and figure out what you
need to do
if you walk into a place and some guy
puts hearing aids on you and charges you
five thousand dollars
and hasn't done a hearing test on you
that's a scam it's time to leave
so just make sure that you're protecting
yourself know what needs to happen when
you go into a hearing test and hearing
aid evaluation appointment
and advocate for your rights as a
patient to get the best hearing care
possible
if you spend thousands of dollars on a
pair of hearing aids and you feel like
they're not working
a lot of the times it's just because you
haven't been wearing them
and you haven't adjusted to them or they
need to be programmed maybe you put them
in a drawer for a couple
years and decided that you wanted to go
ahead and get back on the horse
well guess what your hearing changes
over time just like when your eyes
change your vision changes we get new
lenses
with hearing aids if you're hearing
changes you have to have them tuned
so that usually starts with a hearing
test not just randomly going in after
three or four years saying uh can you
just bump these up a little bit
it's a little bit more science to that
we hear with our brains
not our ears it goes to your brain so
there's a little bit more involved let's
say you spent five thousand dollars with
that guy down the street who didn't even
test your hearing
and it's been a year or whatever or even
six months later and then you go to a
different center
and they want to sell you a seven
thousand dollar pair of hearing aids um
i i have to say that that's a little bit
unethical if someone walks in and their
hearing aids are just a couple or a few
years old
it's always worth it to try to reprogram
them test the hearing first
do some real ear measures make sure that
the tips that go in the ear are
appropriate for the type of hearing loss
that they have
or severity of hearing loss that they
have um
and orient the patient if it's been two
years since they started wearing
uh the hearing aids they're probably not
gonna know how to change a battery or
how to clean it and maintain it
you have to maintain hearing aids to be
able to get good sound
i've heard horror stories of people who
just had wax in their filters and were
sold a new set of hearing aids because
they weren't working so you know with
this industry you have to protect
yourself you have to be knowledgeable
about what you're getting into
it's not just to wake up one day and go
get a set of hearing aids
i know that that's it makes us
uncomfortable to learn about things that
we don't know about
but now with things like youtube and
social media we make it easy for you
so just watch some videos educate
yourself dr cliff olson is a wonderful
resource and he's like my idol
um when it comes to audiology and
educating patients about
our field so anyway i hope you guys
enjoyed this video
i hope you stay well out there thank you
so much for watching and i'll see you
next week
you
