Hear In Private Practice

My father-in-law always told us that if we didn’t “market” our practice, it would be like a guy winking at a girl in the dark.  That pretty girl wouldn’t know that guy was alive :).  Audiologists have historically been reluctant marketers but I think we all can agree that it’s a necessary part of being (and remaining) independent.  Sara Bloom,

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

For people who wear hearing aids, using the telephone can be frustrating.  Not only can hearing and understanding be difficult, but feedback generated by placing the handset near the hearing aid can be distracting and annoying.  The evolution of and dependence upon telecommunications in our society cannot be overstated. Phones are everywhere and everyone is on them.  In a recent

A disruptive innovation is an innovation that helps to create a new market.  Sometimes it will also disrupt an existing market, displacing an earlier technology.  The term is used in business and technology to describe innovations that improve a product or service in ways that the market doesn’t anticipate, typically by first reaching a different set of consumers and later

This blog is modified from a Physician Fax our office sends out monthly.  It was initially written by Jennifer T. Lamfers, AuD (bio below) March was National Kidney Month and March 8th was World Kidney Day.  Why is this important to us?  For years we have  been aware of rare syndromes involving renal disorder and hearing loss, such as Alport,

Hearing aids have come a long way.  We now have sleek and tiny digital signal processors with automatic directionality, noise suppression, feedback control, frequency shaping and a plethora of features designed to enhance the user experience. In ‘one on one’ conversation, hearing aids do a fine job.  The noisy restaurant, family gathering or fellowship hall after church…..this is where the

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

If you are a Medicare Provider do you and your staff know the rules you have to follow for Medicare?  If you are a patient, why will some places give you a “free” test and others will not?  Answering these answers requires covering a lot of ground. What prompted these questions was a class I taught concerning insurance in “Business

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

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