Widex Remote Care
FitHearing Audiology Network offers telehealth through Widex Remote Care because we are committed to bringing you the most cutting-edge technology available. We deal with hearing aids that do much more than simply amplify sound, but bring your environment to life, no matter where you find yourself.
Hearing aids today are capable of reducing background noise, comfortably boosting speech, automatically sensing changes in the environment, and even assisting with spatial location. While their abilities in terms of manipulating the sonic environment to your advantage has never been greater, that’s not all. They also connect wirelessly via Bluetooth to all kinds of devices, allowing you to control your volume, programs, and much more.
Hearing Aids Have an Adjustment Period
Despite the incredible capabilities of contemporary hearing aids, they have always come with an adjustment period. Especially for those who are wearing hearing aids for the first time, it can take a few weeks to get used to them. Part of that process is adjusting the “fitment,” which is what we call the programming on the tiny computer inside a set of hearing aids. We might need to reduce high frequencies or boost them more; or change the range of amplification that’s available; or adjust the ratio between speech and background sound; or increase or decrease the amount of dynamic range compression on the background sound, speech or both.
Some of this might sound complicated, but all you really need to know is that there’s a lot we can do to make a set of hearing aids sound more comfortable to you. If you can describe a problem with what you’re hearing, we can address it in a number of ways to make the sound more realistic and pleasant, while still giving you the amplification you need to hear the world clearly. Similarly, if your hearing aids aren’t boosting sound enough, we can increase the volume, as well.
An initial fitment is done based on the results of your hearing test. While these results generally provide a good place to start, it’s also true that we hear as much with our brains as with our ears. Two people with identical hearing test results (which is rare) may still experience major differences in the ways their brains interpret the sound coming in through their ears. For this reason, fitment tends to be an ongoing process.
Despite having perfectly calibrated hearing aids to accommodate your particular hearing loss, once you get out in the world you’ll likely find that your fitment needs some adjustment. This is completely normal. We expect to see our patients return to us a few times in the first weeks or months of wearing their hearing aids for adjustments of all kinds, once they start identifying issues with their fitment in day-to-day use.
TeleHealth Makes Fitment Adjustments Easy
This is where TeleHealth enters the picture. Using the WIDEX REMOTE CARE app on a video-conferencing device (like a smartphone, tablet, or computer with a camera and microphone), it is now possible to speak directly with us at FitHearing Audiology so that we can address your fitment needs right through your phone, without requiring an office visit.
We have found this service invaluable during the COVID-19 pandemic, allowing us to maintain social distancing with our patients and still meet their fitment needs. We can even administer a hearing test through the app, to determine whether your fitment requires adjustment based on changes in your hearing ability since your initial office visit.
As more people are vaccinated and the pandemic becomes less threatening for most of us, the WIDEX REMOTE CARE app is still very useful, especially for patients with busy lives or who may live further away from our office. It’s as simple as opening the app at the time of your appointment and communicating with us as we make adjustments. In fact, because you’re out in the real world instead of the more clinical environment of our office, it’s sometimes the case that these adjustments turn out to be more helpful than for those patients who choose to visit us in person.
If you think you might need hearing aids, make an appointment for a hearing test today and find out how hearing aids can improve your life! If you’re concerned about the time involved in working with your new hearing aids, the WIDEX REMOTE CARE app makes it a breeze, so don’t wait any longer to start wearing a new set of hearing aids.
