Decoupling Professional Audiological Services from the Sale of Hearing Devices

By Brian Taylor and Vinaya Manchaiah

This article is a part of the September/October 2019, Volume 31, Number 5, Audiology Today issue.

Background

Helping adults manage hearing loss is by far the most fundamental aspect of audiology practice, making this the bread and butter of our profession. Hearing instruments play a crucial role in managing hearing loss in adults (Ftouh et al, 2018; Laplante-Lévesque et al, 2010).

The traditional service-delivery model has a linear pathway and includes bundled service packages. We use the term linear to describe the traditional model of service provided by an audiologist that progresses from one stage to another in a series of steps, delivered by the same clinic. Like a straight line on a graph, the linear pathway of care, as defined here, is undeviating: All stages of the buying process are conducted by the same business entity, as shown in FIGURE 1.

Given that hearing-care services have been delivered in this sequential manner for decades, it is considered the traditional consumer value chain. However, various innovations in technology and service delivery have resulted in the decoupling of the traditional consumer value chain. In this article, we aim to provide some insights into possible future service-delivery models for the management of adult hearing loss.

The Traditional Linear and Bundled Service-Delivery Model

Audiologists, by virtue of their formal academic training, tend to have a myopic view of their role within the health-care system. Audiologists believe they create value by completing three tasks with each person with hearing loss. (In this article, we define persons with hearing loss as adults, age 18 and older). These three tasks include: (1) a diagnostic hearing assessment; (2) treatment planning focused almost exclusively on hearing aid selection and fitting; and (3) long-term follow-up care and management with hearing aid use as a core component.

The audiologists’ view of service delivery centers on these three main components, delivered in one bundled package and typically paid out-of-pocket by the person receiving the services (ASHA, 2019; Windmill et al, 2016). This provider-centric view of the service-delivery model is not wrong or misguided, but it does not necessarily represent the view of the individuals who receive these services. For that, we turn to a different way of examining the service-delivery model—one that, thanks largely to advances in technology, is evolving rapidly.