The Ida Institute is progressing with its Vision 2020 project. We have developed three work streams for the project: The Hearing Care Specialist of the Future, Telehealth, and the Big Message.
We have now held our first meetings on the Hearing Care Specialist of the Future. The objective is to help audiologists adapt as the industry changes in the next few years by looking at what their role in patient care is beyond the audiogram.
Before the meeting about the Hearing Care Specialist of the Future, members of our community uploaded video presentations (Selfies) of their work to our forum to generate discussion. These discussions served as a starting point for the meetings.
The main ideas produced in the Hearing Care Specialist of the Future meetings for the longevity of audiology, are:
Encourage patient centered care: This includes increasing the focus on the patients’ needs through counseling and rehabilitative therapy, rather than on selling hearing aids.
Offer flexible services: A more accurate assessment of patient needs will enable effective, high-quality services. Clinical skills and sales skills are both people skills, and therefore similar.
Improve communication: Patients need to understand hearing loss as a circumstance that needs management, rather than a quick fix, so they can see the value of rehabilitative services. Hearing loss prevention activities and public advocacy should also be promoted.
More research: Better evidence for the value of patient centered care will impact public and private reimbursement of rehabilitative services.
It was also discussed that, among other things, future hearing care specialists need to be facilitators of new technology. Audiologist should not only help patients use it themselves, but also use it in their practices to allow more time for counseling sessions. Additionally, audiology students need help understanding the realities of life in the clinics, compared to what they learn about diagnostics and patient centered care.
Vision 2020 aims to collaboratively create a global vision of hearing healthcare in the year 2020. We will continue our discussions with our next work stream, Telehealth, in October. Check back for more updates.