For over eighty years now, Beltone has been at the forefront of providing Americans with great hearing care experiences. Beltone Tristate is proud to be a part of this movement, because we’ve seen thousands of patients over the years go on to live richer, more fulfilling lives once they’ve taken control of their hearing health.
Having so much experience in this realm means we’ve also made a great effort in perfecting how we deliver care to our patients, so that they get a consistently great experience. By developing a reliable, predictable process, we have a greater opportunity as hearing professionals to provide personalized care to our patients.
Research shows that a person’s hearing care provider is essential in creating better outcomes for the patient when they’re adapting to wearing hearing technology. Just as hearing loss itself is gradual, so too is the rediscovery of sounds when a person is new to wearing a hearing aid. Sounds you didn’t even know you were missing — like the crunching of leaves or the sounds of children’s voices — suddenly reappear, and you might find yourself expending extra energy processing this additional information.
Some folks choose to throw their hearing aids in a drawer, which will ultimately make their hearing worse over time. We work with our patients through counseling, educational materials, and by setting clear expectations early on in our process about what hearing care and hearing treatment truly looks and feels like.
So what does our four-part FREE hearing test look like? Let’s break it down so you fully understand the Beltone approach to better hearing!
Step 1: Your personalized assessment
How is hearing loss affecting your life? How is it affecting those around you? Since we don’t believe in providing one size fits all solutions — and since you won’t benefit from one! — the personalized assessment is designed to help us better understand the way you live, the things you love to do, and how your (potential) hearing loss might be hindering you from enjoying those moments to the fullest. This conversation will also help us identify the different symptoms you are experiencing, which will help create the personalized treatment recommendations that are needed to help you hear your best in the places you most want and need to.
Step 2: The video ear exam
Once we’ve had the opportunity to talk about your current hearing experiences and get a deeper understanding of what activities mean the most to you, we’ll use a special tool called a video otoscope to screen your hearing.
The video otoscope is similar to the tool that your primary care physician uses to look inside your ears during wellness checks, but this type of otoscope can actually project images onto a computer screen. You and your provider can look at and discuss these images so that you can have a clearer picture — literally and figuratively — of what’s going on in your ears. Do you have hearing loss, or could it be an ear infection? Maybe it’s wax buildup? Whatever the case, this quick, comfortable part of the screening points us in the direction of where your treatment will need to go.
Step 3: Audiometric Test
After we’ve finished with the video otoscope, it’s time to assess what frequencies you’re having trouble hearing. We’ll conduct speech and tone tests, word discrimination testing, and air and bone tests in order to create what is called your “audiogram.” The audiogram helps identify where you’re having difficulty and tells us as hearing care providers if wearing hearing technology is needed, as well as what kind of hearing technology would be best for your type of hearing loss.
Step 4: Reviewing your results
After we’ve had the opportunity to assess the information on your audiogram, it’s our responsibility to help you understand your results, why you’re experiencing the loss of hearing that you are, and our recommendations for treatment, including what type of hearing technology is most appropriate for your type of hearing loss. We carry a full line of the latest and most effective devices available, so no matter what type of treatable loss you’re experiencing, we’ll have a solution for you that can be expertly fit by one of our many trusted hearing professionals.
The first step to experiencing better hearing? It’s yours for the taking! Contact Beltone Tristate TODAY for your FREE hearing test.