Best Practices For Hearing Aid Evaluations, Fittings, & Real Ear Measurement (REM)
Better hearing starts here at Summit Hearing Aid Center. Ensuring that you hear the absolute best with your new or existing hearing aids requires a commitment of time and attention to detail. Our goal is to improve your quality of life by thoroughly reviewing your hearing difficulties and recommending appropriate solutions tailored specifically to you. As a result, you will feel seen and heard, which fulfills your mission to provide patient-centered care.
The results from your comprehensive hearing evaluation will provide the hearing care professional an outline of what sounds you may be missing or hearing. Moreover, all of your results will be discussed with you, in detail, in a way that is easy for you to understand. It is usually at this appointment that you will get to see and touch different styles of hearing aids as well as be able to listen to a hearing aid. Your hearing care professional will help you choose the best hearing aid(s) style, features, and level of sophistication based on your degree of hearing loss, lifestyle, and financial circumstances. The final decision on which hearing aid(s) is purchased is your choice.
Once you have selected your hearing aids, your hearing care professional will program them based on a prescription, to meet your hearing needs.The hearing devices will be customized to your ear as well as your comfort level as we ease you into better hearing. You will be instructed on how to use and care for your devices as well as any support required!
We provide a 45 day hearing aid evaluation period which includes structured appointments so you and your hearing care professional have enough time to collaborate together as you solve your hearing difficulties. This period of fitting and programming is perhaps the most crucial series of appointments you will have with our team. Given the varied effects of hearing loss on individuals, it takes extreme precision and accuracy to program your hearing aids precisely for your needs.
With that being said, utilizing Real Ear Measurement (also known as live speech mapping), our staff is able to verify that your hearing aids are programmed exactly to your hearing loss prescription. Vast majority of professionally fit hearing aids are programmed at First-Fit Manufacturer settings. First-Fit settings are essentially a guess about how much amplification you need to overcome your hearing loss. Unfortunately, your hearing performance will suffer significantly if this is only the approach taken to
program your hearing aids.
To overcome this, Real Ear Measurement (REM) is an objective verification method performed by our staff to ensure that you are receiving the correct amount of amplification for soft, average, and loud speech. With this method, small microphones placed in the ear canal are used to distinguish how you are able to hear speech through your hearing aids. Our staff then can be able to modify for you to receive maximum benefit from your hearing aids. REM is one of the many Best Practice procedures proved at Summit Hearing Aid Center that yield treatment success rated significantly above the industry average.