Hear In Private Practice

Jul. 03, 2012

Hearing Aids and Telephones

Christine Diles
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
Jun. 26, 2012

Can Lyric….?

Christine Diles
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
Jun. 19, 2012

The Link Between Your Kidneys and Your Hearing

Hearing Health & Technology Matters
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,
Jun. 12, 2012

The Little Hearing Aid that Can’t

Christine Diles
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
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. 25, 2012

Medicare, Billing and Free Tests

Hearing Health & Technology Matters
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
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