- Trial Periods are definitely the norm
in the Hearing Aid Industry,
but in this video,
I'm going to explain exactly why I hate
Hearing Aid Trial Periods.
Coming up.
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Hi guys, Cliff Olson, Doctor of Audiology
and Founder of Applied Hearing Solutions
in Phoenix, Arizona.
And on this channel,
I cover a bunch of hearing related information
to help make you a better informed consumer.
So if you're into that,
make sure you hit that subscribe button.
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every time I post a new video.
If you're wearing a pair of hearing aids right now,
then there's a good chance
that you went through a trial period
to determine if the amount of benefit
that those hearing aids gave you,
was worth the time, the effort, and the cost,
of hearing treatment.
Some states like California actually require by-law
that you receive a no risk Money-Back guarantee
during this trial period.
This means that if you don't like the services
that they're providing you
and you don't like the hearing aids that they fit you with,
then you can return those devices
and get 100% of your money back.
It's important to understand that trial periods
are intended to be a good thing.
They're designed to help protect the consumer
from being taken advantage of
by an unscrupulous hearing aid dealer.
While a hearing a trial period
may seem to make sense on the surface,
there are several reasons
why I actually hate hearing aid trial periods
and ultimately believe that they are a bad thing
for individuals with hearing loss.
The first reason I hate hearing aid trial periods,
is that they don't give you a realistic understanding
of how much benefit
you should ultimately receive with hearing aids.
If you watch my channel regularly,
then you already know
that in order to receive the maximum amount of benefit
from a set of hearing aids,
you need to have best practices followed
when selecting fitting and programming your devices.
Now if you don't know what best practices are,
I highly recommend that you watch my video
that I will link in the description,
because it will explain what best practices are
and why they are so critical
to your optimal hearing aid performance.
And the problem with most trial periods
is that most hearing care professionals
do not follow these best practices
inside of this time period.
Instead, what a lot of these hearing care providers do
is they end up fitting you with a set of hearing devices
that they have in stock,
that is already pre-determined,
no matter what type of hearing loss you have,
and no matter what your wants and needs are.
Then they typically perform what we call
first-fit programming,
which is when they put the hearing aids inside of your ears,
enter your audiogram into the programming software
and hit the auto-program button.
This is usually followed by giving you brief instruction
of how to insert and remove those hearing aids
from your ears
and how to change the batteries
or stick them into a charger.
Once this hearing aid fitting is completed,
they send you home for a couple of weeks,
crossing their fingers, hoping,
that you're proceeding just enough benefit
for you to actually keep those hearing aids.
This type of trial period
ultimately means that you're making a decision
on whether or not to keep those hearing aids,
without having a full understanding
of how much benefit you should really expect to receive.
This usually results in one of two things happening.
Either you ended up keeping those hearing aids
without getting the full amount of benefit out of them
because best practices were never followed.
Or even worse,
you end up returning those hearing aids for a refund,
because you never actually got to see
how much benefit they would really give you.
The second reason that I hate hearing aid trial periods,
is that they're often used as a way to convince you
to purchase new hearing aids,
instead of having your existing hearing aids
repaired or reprogrammed?
Well, I'd like to think that this does not happen a lot.
There are cases where individuals
are encouraged to undergo a trial
with a new set of hearing aids,
when their existing hearing aids are malfunctioning,
or simply just need to be reprogrammed
based on a change in hearing loss severity.
The reason I'm not a big fan of this type of trial period
is that you end up comparing,
nonfunctioning hearing aids
or poorly functioning hearing aids,
with a brand new set of hearing devices
inside of that trial period.
So it ends up skewing your perception
of how much better the new hearing aids are,
and ultimately, you end up getting convincing yourself
that if you want to hear that well,
you have to have new hearing aids to do it.
While newer hearing aid technology
may actually be better for you,
you should at least be given the option to repair
or reprogram your existing hearing aids
so you can ultimately compare apples to apples.
The third reason that I hate hearing aid trial periods
is that they're often used as a hearing aid sales tactic
rather than a true evaluation period.
One of the oldest sales tricks in the book
is the puppy dog clothes.
This is when you go to a pet store.
You see a cute little puppy in the window and they say,
you know what,
go ahead and just take the puppy home for the weekend.
If you ultimately don't want to keep that puppy,
just bring it back on Monday,
and we'll give you a complete refund.
So what happens?
You end up taking that puppy home
and you're like, golly! I can't handle a puppy.
This is, this is a complete nightmare.
I mean, they're cute and they're fluffy,
but there's no way that I could handle
taking care of this puppy
especially when it grows into a dog.
So, you know, you get through Saturday.
You somewhat survive through Sunday
and you get to Sunday night and you're like,
man, I don't know if I can take that dog back.
I know it's not right for me,
but I feel horrible taking it back.
And, you know, telling the clerk like,
I just can't take care of this puppy,
it makes me look like a bad person.
And so what happens,
you end up keeping the puppy
even though you're probably shouldn't keep the puppy.
The same kind of thing happens with hearing aids.
They know that if they can get you out the door
with hearing aids in your ears,
then it dramatically increases the probability
that you're not going to return them,
even if you're getting a very limited benefit from them.
Now, you might be thinking to yourself,
"Cliff, that won't happen to me,
if I got a puppy that I couldn't handle,
I would return that puppy."
And I would do the exact same thing with hearing aids.
But I'm sorry,
the data shows that if you go home with hearing aids
in a trial period,
no matter how much benefit that you're receiving,
there is a high probability that you're going to keep them.
And the fourth reason that I hate hearing a trial periods
are the promises that are never kept.
We've already established
that trial periods increase the likelihood
that a provider will send you home with hearing aids
that have not been properly selected, fit or programed.
But you should also be aware of a little trick
that these hearing care providers are starting to use.
Now that they know that consumers like yourself
are becoming more educated about best practices,
especially real ear measurement.
This is when you're sent home with a set of hearing aids
at the beginning of a trial period,
with the promise that they will perform
real ear measurement with you,
when you come back in several weeks.
Then upon returning in a few weeks,
if you end up reporting enough benefit
to justify keeping the hearing aids,
then they never perform real ear measurement on you at all,
because, hey, you're getting enough benefit
with those hearing aids.
Why should we have to go in
and do real ear measurement then?
Or, they end up doing the real ear measurement,
but they never end up making any significant adjustments
to get you closer to your prescription,
because they are just quite frankly lazy.
The problem with this methodology
is that even if you're getting enough benefit
to justify keeping those hearing aids,
you never end up getting the full amount of benefit
out of them.
And if you're going to be going through
all of the time, and the effort, and the cost,
of doing hearing treatment,
don't you think that you deserve
to receive the maximum performance with those devices?
In general,
hearing a trial periods should be set up in a way
to maximize your performance with hearing aids,
so you can get a full understanding
of how much benefit you will ultimately receive
with those devices.
This means following best practices without cutting corners
or taking any shortcuts during your hearing aid selection,
fitting and programming processes,
so you can discover your maximum performance
with hearing aids.
And like I like to say,
you either go all in or you don't go at all.
That being said,
let me give you an actual example
of what this should look like.
Upon completion of a hearing test,
your hearing care provider,
should be reviewing those hearing test results with you,
in a way that they can help you understand
how much benefit you should be receiving from hearing aids,
so you can have an expectation
of what your end result would be.
Then after a comprehensive hearing aid evaluation
where we uncover a bunch of information about you
and the situations that you want to hear better in,
we can custom order specific hearing aid brand,
make and model,
that has feature sets,
that can accommodate your specific wants and needs.
Since you will not be fit
with a one-size-fits-all hearing aid
that we just happen to have in stock,
you'll have to be rescheduled
for a comprehensive fitting appointment,
when you come back in a week or two.
This way we can have plenty of time to follow best practices
during these fitting appointments,
to ensure that we physically fit
the hearing aids appropriately.
To ensure that we precision program,
the hearing aids ideally using real ear measurement,
and to ensure that we instruct you enough
on how to actually use your devices appropriately.
Then we have you go home to use those hearing aids
for a week or two,
come back to the office,
but not for the purpose of identifying whether or not
those hearing aids are good enough for you to keep,
but to identify if there's other areas
that we can actually improve,
to maximize your performance even more.
Then we do this one to two more times
over the course of 30 to 45 days,
until we've maximized your performance with hearing aids,
and so you know how to clean and maintain those hearing aids
and use them appropriately.
All hearing a trial period
should be concluded with a validated subjective
outcome questionnaire,
like the APHAB, or the COSI,
or a variety of other questionnaires that exist.
This way, we can get a good understanding
of your subjective improvement with hearing aids.
And it's much more detailed
than just asking you if you feel like you're hearing better.
Trial periods performed this way let you know exactly,
how much benefit you should expect to receive
from hearing aids.
And you don't need one of these ridiculous 90 to 180 day
trial periods to evaluate it,
if you're doing the trial period correctly.
Though I don't know at what point
that hearing aid trial periods
became a way for hearing care providers
to stop doing their job well,
and perhaps it's been this way all along.
All I know is that if I were you,
I would demand a higher level of care
than just having a set of auto-program stock hearing aids
handed to me,
with a pat on the back as I head out the door
wishing me good luck.
So the next time that a hearing care provider
suggests that you undergo a trial period,
don't freak out,
just make sure that they do it the right way
instead of the lazy way.
That's it for this video.
If you have any questions,
leave them in the comment section below.
If you like the video, please share,
and if you want to see other videos just like this one,
go ahead and hit that subscribe button.
Also feel free to check out my website DrCliffAud.com
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