Auditdata is continuing to invite hearing care professionals across the United States to participate in its industry-wide survey examining the staffing shortage and administrative burden facing hearing care clinics. The survey seeks input from clinic owners, practice managers, and audiologists to better understand where clinician time is being lost and what factors are contributing to burnout — helping build an industry benchmark that currently does not exist.
The initiative follows Auditdata research suggesting the shortage is no longer solely a pipeline problem. Roughly 48 million Americans live with hearing loss, while an estimated 75% of U.S. counties face audiology staffing shortages. Yet Auditdata argues the most immediate constraint isn’t simply the number of clinicians — it’s how little of their day reaches the patient. Documentation, inconsistent workflows, disconnected systems, and a growing layer of third-party administrator (TPA) paperwork can consume up to an hour of each clinician’s day, fueling the burnout and attrition that further strain the profession.
The five-minute survey asks respondents to rate the severity of staffing pressure in their organization, identify the biggest drains on clinician time—including TPA portals and prior authorizations from programs such as TruHearing and UnitedHealthcare Hearing—and describe what would most help close the gap. Auditdata plans to publish the aggregated findings as an industry benchmark later this year.
“Everyone in hearing care knows the workforce is stretched, but we keep treating it as a problem we can only solve by training more people, which takes years we don’t have,” said Emma Rytter Skovgaard, who leads communications and marketing at Auditdata. “What we hear from clinics is that an enormous amount of clinician time disappears into admin before it ever reaches a patient. We want to put hard numbers behind that, because you can’t fix what you can’t measure.”
Hearing care professionals can take part in the anonymous survey here.
Source: Auditdata
