Hearing Health & Technology Matters

Nick Fitzgerald has served as HHTM’s Chief Marketing Officer for the past 3 years. He is the President and Owner of AuDSEO, a full service digital marketing agency. With over 15 years of digital marketing experience, Nick is a highly data-driven marketer, with expertise in search engine optimization, digital analytics and forensics, social media, digital advertising, and web development. He has been involved in the construction and optimization of nearly 1,000 web presences, including some of the largest Fortune 500 companies.
Featured image for “Let’s Get Kinky:  Government Regulation and the Supply Curve, Part 1”
Jul. 31, 2012

Let’s Get Kinky: Government Regulation and the Supply Curve, Part 1

Hearing Health & Technology Matters
Last post looked at why different firms are Willing to Sell at different Price points — another way of saying that some firms can compete more and longer in a free market because their costs are lower and their margins are higher.  This was bad news for RR, who’d written a letter to the editor of a journal asking why
Jul. 25, 2012

Five good reasons why university programs should seek audiology accreditation

Hearing Health & Technology Matters
The following post is the second in a three-part series on audiology accreditation.   By Ross J. Roeser My first blog post on audiology accreditation focused on how faculties within universities view accreditation: They aren’t looking for more things to do, shrinking budgets don’t provide additional funding, their speech-language pathology faculty colleagues must continue with CAA (Council on Academic Accreditation in
Featured image for “Tilting Supply Curves and Playing Fields”
Jul. 24, 2012

Tilting Supply Curves and Playing Fields

Hearing Health & Technology Matters
 “We go out and we buy a lot of products made in China. That’s how we celebrate Labor Day.”   David Letterman, 2010 Last time at Econ 101, the Supply Curve was developed and described:  firms will Supply a certain Quantity (Qs) at a given Price.  As you’d expect, they are Willing to Supply more (Qs increases) as Price increases.
Jul. 18, 2012

Hearing health gets a star turn in the media: So what if it’s in a farce?

Hearing Health & Technology Matters
By David H. Kirkwood There are an awful lot of health-related subjects that capture the attention of the news media. Whenever there’s a hint of progress toward curing cancer, losing weight, warding off old age, improving one’s face or figure, or treating anxiety, depression, or pain, you can count on every communications medium out there to pick up on it.
Featured image for “Econ 101:  Supply Curves and Willingness to Sell”
Jul. 17, 2012

Econ 101: Supply Curves and Willingness to Sell

Hearing Health & Technology Matters
Q:  “Does it really cost $600 or more for the manufacturer to ship a hearing aid to me versus to Costco or the VA?” Sincerely, RR Last post considered RR’s plaint that big competitors’ product Costs are lower than his, so his profit margins are necessarily smaller than theirs, no matter how careful he is with his operating costs.  RR wanted
Jul. 11, 2012

Readers, be warned: I’m going to invoke the dreaded “M word”

Hearing Health & Technology Matters
I’m pleased to introduce Sara Bloom, this week’s guest contributor to Hearing Views. Sara has been writing for me for almost my entire career in journalism. She was an award-winning feature writer and all-round news reporter for a community newspaper in the New York suburbs where I was editor and publisher. Later, she wrote dozens of cover stories for a
Jul. 11, 2012

The ‘M’ word: Menopause and Hearing Loss

Hearing Health & Technology Matters
As so often happens when women hit mid to late 40s, we talk about menopause.  One friend stated she was positive her hearing changed during menopause.  She did not have a baseline from before her change so there was no way to positively check it, but I found her comment intriguing.  Upon my research I did find a study in
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Jul. 10, 2012

Econ 101: How We Are Like Wheat Farmers

Hearing Health & Technology Matters
Q from an independent hearing aid specialist:{{1}}[[1]]I found this question in a Letter to the Editor, entitled “Profiting From Hearing Aid Sales.”  It was published, but unanswered, in an industry journal[[1]] “I have minimum overhead… so perhaps my prices are lower than average.  However, if Costco is purchasing their aids for the same price that the VA pays (the price of
Jul. 04, 2012

Accreditation of audiology programs: A view from within (first in a series)

Hearing Health & Technology Matters
By Ross Roeser Having been one of the fortunate audiologists invited to the founding meeting of the American Academy of Audiology, I vividly remember that it was then that I heard for the first time the notion of the Doctor of Audiology becoming the new designator for the profession of audiology. What a unique concept! Not only would audiologists have
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Jul. 03, 2012

Location, Location, Location

Hearing Health & Technology Matters
Last week’s post gave a rambling answer to a Reader’s Question from Worried Mom asking about survival of private practice.  The Answer went down the old bricks-and-mortar path, consolidated into a set of reflections that I (jokingly) referred to as my  Unified Location Theory– 17 years in the making and no better now than it was back in 1995.  I clarified