Christine Diles

Christine Diles has been a clinical audiologist since 1980, working in both private practice and medical settings. She has worked alongside physicians in their offices as well as in a hospital based clinic affording her the experience of working with a wide variety of patient populations. She has also been involved in rehabilitation, concentrating on the dispensing hearing aids and patient education. Christine also recently served as a consultant to the Product Development team at Sycle.net. At Sycle, she assisted in guiding development and enhancements of the software to better serve the needs of those of us in private practice.
Jun. 06, 2012

Professional Reports – Obligation or Opportunity?

Christine Diles
Many of us in private practice receive referrals from the medical community.  Some of us don’t, but sure wish we did.  When we do receive a direct referral, we all know that professional protocol dictates that we refer the patient back with a full report of our findings and recommendations or, at the very least, provide that report in a
May. 21, 2012

Red, White and Blue = Purple

Christine Diles
What do you do when a patient arrives in your office with a broken, damaged or lost custom hearing aid?  How can we serve our patient when Buster has gotten a hold of their hearing aid, again?  Do patients just have to “get by” if they don’t own their own backups? We’ve always felt that we had a contract of
May. 13, 2012

Who Let the Dogs Out?

Christine Diles
Pretty much weekly, a patient contacts our office with the report of a lost or damaged hearing aid.  The stories range from the mundane to the miraculous.  Common among the reports are that the device was lost in the sheets during a hospital stay.  Almost equally common is “the dog ate my hearing aid”.  We have personal experience with this
May. 06, 2012

Music Soothes the Savage Beast

Christine Diles
I don’t really mean that our patients are beasts, but let’s face it, buying hearing aids is about as much fun as replacing a transmission or a roof for most folks.  Especially the first timers!  They don’t want hearing aids, they don’t want to need hearing aids.  Really now, who can blame people for being a bit grumpy?  They haven’t
May. 01, 2012

Ringing That Bell, Part 2

Christine Diles
Hopes Dashed In my last post  I told the sad, sad story of how we thought we had a compelling business case for the creation of a hearing loop distribution company.  We had a “ringer” (in more ways than one!) for a partner and we were going to import and distribute home loop systems to hearing care professionals. Since we had
Featured image for “Ringing That Bell”
Apr. 17, 2012

Ringing That Bell

Christine Diles
In our practice, we have been including installed home loops with the purchase of T coil equipped hearing aids for 10 years. We find that our patients are happier with their devices since they can once again successfully hear and enjoy watching TV.   Our return rates are reduced and our patients are more likely to tell their friends about