- Hey guys, welcome back to the DrCliffAuD vlog.
This is vlog number 32.
Of course, if you've missed any of my other vlogs,
go back and check them out on my YouTube channel.
But the main topic of what I wanna talk about today
is best practices, and specifically,
what I'm talking about are the processes and procedures
that hearing care providers should be following
in order to maximize your performance with hearing aids.
Now, some of you might be aware
that I actually have an approved provider network,
which is a network of hearing care professionals
who have committed to following best practices
and acting in your best interest.
But I don't really wanna talk about them so much today.
I wanna talk about these best practices,
and if you don't have a Dr. Cliff Approved Provider
in your area, where can you actually go to ensure
that you're going to receive
a really high level of hearing care?
Well, what I've actually done on my DrCliffAuD.com website,
is I've actually put up a checklist of different things,
different best practices that you can actually take
into a hearing care provider to make sure
that they're actually doing all of the proper procedures.
These checklists basically have
every best practice procedure from the time
that you go in for your initial consultation
to having your hearing test,
to having a hearing aid evaluation
to determine which technology is right for you,
to the fitting sequence, the entire fitting sequence,
as well as follow up care with your devices
from now until basically forever.
The whole concept here is that you would be able
to actually print these out and take them with you in
to see your hearing care professional,
or even Use them to call around
to find out who you want to go to.
You can literally be like,
"Do you perform this procedure?"
Or, "Do you do this?
This is part of best practices.
Do you actually do that inside of your clinic?"
And then see what they respond with?
Now, this can be a little tricky
because there are a ton of best practices
in these checklists.
And so they might do some of them, but not all of them.
They might do most of them, but not all of them.
And so you really have to make an educated decision
of whether or not that particular clinic
is where you wanna go
based on how many best practices they actually follow.
Now, I should say that just
because a clinic follows best practices does not guarantee
that they are going to be following
those best practices correctly.
You actually have to go to someone
who knows what the heck they're doing,
and the checklists are just there
to provide a guide for you.
Now, if you ended up finding a hearing care professional
who does all or most of these best practices,
you can pretty well bet
that they're probably gonna be pretty adamant
that they're doing them the right way.
Now, what you did don't wanna fall victim to
is going to a hearing care provider who says
that they're doing all these things,
but they don't actually do them.
And that is why it's important to bring the checklists
into the clinic with you so they can go over
and either you can check off each procedure
that they've done,
or they can check off the procedure they've done
as they're doing it.
This way, you can feel comfortable
that by the time are done
with your consultation appointment,
with your hearing aid evaluation,
with your hearing aid fitting,
and all of the followup care that you receive,
that you are actually receiving the highest level
of hearing care possible.
Now, people always ask me,
"Cliff, why do you care so much about best practices?"
And the answer is very simple.
Best practices are the things
that have been proven by research
to improve hearing aid outcomes with individuals.
So if you are not doing best practices,
then you are not doing the things necessary
to maximize treatment outcomes.
Now, if you know me at all,
you know that I believe that good is the enemy of great.
And unless you have a hearing care provider
who is striving to get you the most benefit
out of your hearing aids, there's a solid chance
that you will never achieve your highest level of outcome.
And that's a shame because the clinics
that follow best practices
and the clinics that do not follow best practices
probably charge you very similar in terms of costs
for your hearing treatment.
So why wouldn't you wanna go somewhere
who's focused on getting the best outcome possible
compared to a place that's just trying to fit you
with hearing aids and get you out the door?
So this is a very simple pep talk for you.
You should be committing a significant amount of your time
to identify which hearing care providers
are following best practices.
And if you don't have a hearing care provider
in your area that follows best practices,
you need to strongly consider traveling
to find someone who is following best practices.
It is not unheard of to drive several hours
to get to a provider who you know
is going to be treating your hearing loss
in the best way possible.
Now I've already mentioned that all of these checklists here
are actually on my website DrCliffAuD.com.
Now I recently had my website redesigned,
and you can find these best practice checklists
inside the Resources tab on the website.
I highly recommend that you physically print them out
and take them with you in to see your hearing care provider,
regardless of whether
or not they are Dr. Cliff Approved Provider or not.
Now, if this is the first time that you're hearing
about a Dr. Cliff Approved Provider,
you can also check out a Dr. Cliff Approved Provider
in your area by just going to the DrCliffAuD website
and clicking on the Find a Provider tab.
All right, guys, fairly simple video for today.
I'm really hoping that in the next coming weeks,
I'll be able to share a couple of updates
on the new clinic progress.
I think that we're getting close
to being able to share those updates.
And I'm also in the middle of training a new audiologist
that I have on staff at my clinic.
I think you are going to love him.
He's gonna start doing some video content
with us as well,
so you'll probably get to know him pretty well
here in the near future.
That being said,
I hope you enjoyed the quick video for today.
Go ahead and give it a thumbs up if you enjoyed it.
And as always, I'll see you next week.
(upbeat music)