I have patients always commenting on one question when they come back to our clinic:  I don’t want to be a bother but I am having issues.  Sometimes they are apologetic and sometimes they are frustrated.  I would like to address the reality of this idea.

When I first started this field 21 years ago, we had two controls for the most part to change for the patient.  If a patient was seeking an adjustment to his hearing aid, there were precious few changes we could make since 90% of all that was done to the aid was accomplished by the manufacturer.  Now, with the advent of more and more technical digital hearing aids, the aids can have upwards of 115 separate adjustments not to mention any physical fitting issues.  For some patients, who have very discrete sound likes and dislikes, they might require more adjustments.  For others, they may be satisfied with fewer adjustments.  That is why our Audiologists have their doctorate degree to keep up with these changes.  The large, Big Six manufacturers (Oticon, Widex, Starkey, Siemens, Phonak and ReSound) update their technologies every six month or so and those settings can be pushed out to the existing technologies as they spend that 70 million dollars in research and design.

What does that mean for you who have particular requirements for how your hearing aids sound?  Well, we spend more time that most dispensing practices to study the technology to know how to change them for your needs.  Always, some patients will have more adjustments than others.  With the newest technologies and with a doctorate degree to understand it, only Hearing Solution Centers can work to get it right in the least amount of time.