Enable family doctors to identify hearing loss by providing them with online tools!
This program would enlist the support of health care providers with the broadest reach into the general population: the family doctor.
Working through medical societies and national and international health care organizations, family doctors will be encouraged to routinely suggest a baseline hearing test for anyone aged 55 years or older.
To motivate patients to follow through, family doctors would write "prescriptions for hearing health" - directing patients to make annual hearing checks as part of their health care routines.
With the endorsement of professional audiology associations and audiologists, the initiative would offer free-of-charge hearing checks to people over 55 years of age when presenting the family physicians' referral.
With the physician/audiologist foundation in place, a wide-range of ' first movers' such as healthcare and community groups would be mobilized to actively support the hearing check as part of routine health care initiatives.
