- Hi guys, coming up in this video,
I'm gonna teach you five tips that you can use
to find a great audiologist in your area.
Comin' up.
(ultra lounge theme music)
Cliff Olson here,
doctor of audiology from Applied Hearing Solutions,
and on this channel I cover
a bunch of cool hearing-related stuff,
so if you're into that,
consider hitting the subscribe button.
So a really common question I get is,
"Cliff, how do I find a doctor of audiology in my area?"
And when I think about it, there really is no one good way
to find an audiologist near you.
On top of that, you have audiologists
and hearing instrument specialists.
Both of them essentially do similar things,
but you need to make sure you understand the differences
before you start your search.
And I have another video that I've linked
in the description below,
that you can use to determine
which one of those professionals is right for you.
So there are five really good tips
to help you locate a good audiologist in your area.
And I'm gonna go ahead and cover those
with a screenshot of my computer.
All right, so tip number one is
go to your state's professional licensure board website.
In the state of Arizona
this is the Arizona Department of Health Services.
This is the website that they will have
for all of their licensed providers.
Since audiologists are licensed professionals
in all 50 states,
each state should have their own website
that has that information.
And we will go ahead and go down and do a search
for hearing aid dispensers,
and we are seeking a licensed provider.
The next tip that you can use is go to Healthgrades.com.
Healthgrades.com is terrific
because it requires individuals who are on here
to have a National Provider Identification number,
or NPI number, and makes sure
that anyone that you're pulling up on this website
is a medical provider.
So, since I've done searches on here before,
it will say Audiologist.
And you can either pick your current location,
or enter your city,
so I will just enter current location
and it knows that I'm in Anthem.
And run the search,
and it will give you listings of all of the providers
relatively close to you.
And since I am the only provider in Anthem,
it would populate me up at the top,
basically saying I'm 1.2 miles away
from where the search was conducted.
And we'll click on my listing here.
And if they have entered in information about themselves,
you can find that here.
You can see whatever their care philosophy is.
And you can continue to scroll down for more information.
And something that I really like
about this particular website
is that it has verified reviews
from individuals who've been to that provider.
So you can feel free to read through those reviews,
and continue on.
You wanna make sure
that you're actually going to a person
that you will like to work with,
since hearing care generally involves
several visits to that same provider,
you might as well like the person as well.
And tip number three is going to Hearingtracker.com.
I love what they're doing with this particular website.
Audiologists can put listings of their businesses
on this website,
and they can contribute to expert answers,
which is essentially when a consumer or patient
will post a question,
and you have multiple providers from across the country,
perhaps even the world,
answering those questions
in their own professional opinions.
What we're gonna do here is
we are going to find a hearing center, and again,
you would want to enter in your particular location.
So we're gonna go Anthem, Arizona,
and find a hearing aid center.
And so it will show up all of the centers within,
essentially a range of view.
And what you'll notice on Hearingtracker.com
is that they have these blue markers,
some of them have stars, some of them don't.
The ones with stars essentially have been verified,
and are consistent with providing
best practices in our industry.
So if at all possible,
try to go to one that has a star on their listing.
And so you can go visit that clinic page.
Again, we'll use my clinic as an example.
And you can find out some information.
It will have a direct link to the particular website
of that practice.
You can see some photos, and again, some bio information,
and services that they provide.
Okay, on to tip number four is good old-fashioned Google.
So Google, what you'd wanna do is
you just wanna type in Audiologist near me.
And there we go.
It will bring up a map
of where the audiologists are in your particular area.
And this right here is a good example
of why you want to run multiple searches,
from multiple different websites,
because what it's doing is it's showing
that there's a bunch of different audiologists in this area,
when in fact I know that there's only one,
and that is me and my clinic at Applied Hearing Solutions.
So there can be ads at the top of these listings,
and then there can be some listings
that are no longer in existence.
So you wanna make sure and cross-reference
whatever you find on Google
with these other websites that we just showed you.
So if we click on Applied Hearing Solutions,
here comes the listing,
and what you can see is that there's some reviews as well,
has information about open hours and phone number,
again has some photos.
And so it just has a really concise amount of information.
You could have a link to go to the website.
But a great resource to use is Google for sure.
All right, that is enough for the computer.
Back to me.
Now the fifth tip is not really something
that you can do online.
It involves going to your primary care doctor.
Primary care doctors have established relationships
with other specialists in other fields
throughout their entire area,
that they consistently refer to
for whatever medical condition the patient is going through.
It's as simple as going to your
primary care doctor and asking them
who they refer their hearing-impaired patients to.
And that can be another really good search tool
for you to take that name
and start these search processes that I just went over.
Now don't just use one of these tips
to find the provider you're looking for.
You wanna use all of them together, right?
Once you have a primary care doctor
give you a referral to who he thinks you should go to,
go ahead and do a license search on that individual.
Go ahead and go to Google
and check and see if that clinic still exists.
Go to Hearingtracker
and see if they have reviews or a listing on there.
Healthgrades lets you know,
just because the doctor's referring to that individual
doesn't mean that patients are having
a really good experience with that individual.
So you wanna make sure that you run all of these searches
to make sure you find the best person in your area.
So many people just go to the first person
that they see in the phone book,
or the first person that they see from a Google search,
and they wonder why they don't have a good experience.
And it's because you're not really seeking out
the best provider for you,
you're seeking out the most convenient provider for you,
which you should never do.
As always, if you have any questions or comments,
leave them in the comments section below.
If you liked this video,
feel free to give me a thumbs-up
and don't be afraid to hit the subscribe button.
I'll see you next time.
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