Jix, excelent post. Thanks for the advice. The Doctor of Audiology at Costco schedules a 90 minute exam before ordering the hearing aids. She has an Au.D. behind her name. They order a set for you special and it takes about 1-2 weeks to get them in and then they are fitted.
Are you referring to Costco as a "Off the Shelf" type of store? I don't, now if I was ordering a pair off the internet - yes that would be off the shelf.
This is not my first rodeo. In 1999 I went to a major reputable hearing aid place. Had all the test, molds made, etc. . .I returned them at the end of the trial period dissatisfied. I am not easily satisfied If I pay thousands of dollars I expect quality. I hope in the last 15 years they have improved.
I'll let you know how the professionalism, and products compare. I've been able to determine that Costco's price (for a similar product) is about 50%.
Insurances are dropping hearing aids and Costco is picking up the ball and running. The reviews are good and the business seems to be thriving.
TXDON:
No, I do not think that Costco sell "off the shelf hearing aids" As to the qualification of Audiologists, There are two general fields of those. An audiologist is a university speciality qualification that concentrates on measuring hearing ability, usually using high tech "booths" and sound generating devices to plot your hearing curve on a graph.
This graph is used by a audiology technician to fit you with a set of hearing aids calibrated and programmed with a computer that adjusts the internal electronics performance to match your graph, or "Audiogram".
In my experience an audiologist can do no better than the instruments in the"booth" are capable of measuring..and there good, bad and better equipped booths..and audiologists. Audiology equipment is sensitive, and expensive. Older equipment may not be good enough to define your audiogram accurately. Modern equipment, no more than 5 years old is probably the minimum requirement, becoz if the audiogram is inaccurate, so will be the resultant programming of the hearing aids.
Back when, hearing aids were simply cone shaped funnels that one stuck into ones ears, These were of some use, but not very effective in modern terms.
Modern hearing aids can do several important things to "shape" the processed sound that you hear through your hearing aids. Most obvious is to make it "louder" or to increase the sound wave pressures impacting upon your eardrums. Of course, sounds pressures must be calibrated to suit, or compensate, for your hearing loss. This sound pressure compensation is different for different kinds of sound or frequency pitch, because a damaged hearing ability has different requirements at different pitches of sound and also requires different capabilities in different sound environments, Noisy rooms, music concerts, Tv listenimg, and conversation one-on-one.
Within the microprocessors of good hearing aids is a system to allow the hearing aid computer that shapes the sound pressure "signal" delivered to your ear drums (the tympanic membrane) to be "programmed" to match your exact need, and to vary that signal to tailor what you hear to suit the kind of sound environment that you in in.
The most difficult ideal to achieve is to allow you to hear clearly without the sound being all mashed up by intruding noise, such as listening to one-on-one conversatiuon in a crowded noisy room.
Second difficulty is to tailor the hearing aid sound output to suit the unique and very complex way in which the human brain interprets sound. This is a specialty of psychology..the real experise of a audiologist doctorate lies in this very, very complex area. In a sense, we do not hear what we hear, we hear what we think . THey get it right about half the time on a good day..but most person's brains will gradually adapt to work pretty well, even if the audiologist did not. This is why a "period of adaptation" is usual, especially for a person who has only recently been fitted with hearing aids for the first time. The impossible dream is for a hearing-impaired person to gain virually perfect hearing..not possible, yet.
So much for the folderol foregoing.
The rubber meets the road when the audiology technician fits your unique hearing aid to your ears and begins to program it from your audiogram, to help you to choose the "earmold" that goes into your ear canal bell.
Earmolds are not straightforward, like a cork. It can be very difficult to get it right, particularly with what is called a "closed mold" Back when, the technician would put a blob of goo into your ear bell, let it set, then remove it to make a plastic casting that exactly fit your ear and sealed it off from external sounds. This sealing was necessary to prevent sounds from the hearing aid "speaker"inside the ear from sneaking around to enter the hearing aid microphone outside the ear, thus creating painful loud "sqealing" (acoustic feedback).
Closed molds, however create many other problems. The most common complaint is making every sound from chewing, from your own speaking seem way too loud to you..and disconcerting. People with closed mold hearing aids would often remove them when chewing, for example. The other nasty issue was internal ear" sweating" and that caused different kinds of skin problems inside the ear. Very annoying itchey, scaling, infected ears...and allergic reactions to the plastic plug of the earmold
Fortunately, electronics were invented that stopped squealing and it became unneccesary to use closed earmolds asnymore Happy Day!!
Most modern hearing aids now employ an open mold technology. simply a soft rubber foil with vent holes in it that slips into the ear canal. Not custom made, not tricky to insert, not expensive, not troublesome. Nearly the perfect answer, but it does require quite sophisticated computer technology to avoid acoustic feedback issues.
Getting all this together for each unique hearing impairment client is not a simple task.
The hearing aid technician has to have quite a lot of knowledge and experience..a mere audiologist is helpless with this...unless they were first audiology technicians.
Walmart hires good people..no doubt, but has a challenge finding really good technicians, becoz most of these rare birds go into private business for themselves..or try to.
Yep, Walmart sells good stuff, at good prices. Getting a good experienced technician...not so much.
Here is a challenge..Buy a Walmart hearing aid, then take it somewhere else to get it right...try that...Good luck
