Archive for the ‘Digital Hearing Care News’ Category

Live in the Manchester area? If you are starting to think your hearing might not be as good as it used to be, help is at hand from a number of sources.

Most often when people realise they aren’t hearing so well the first port of call is the local doctor’s surgery, and often from there if the problem isn’t blocked up ears your doctor may refer you to the local hospital’s ENT (Ear, Nose and Throat) department. From there they will assess your hearing, including an inspection of the ear canal and a hearing test, possibly more investigations besides, and eventually you could well be in receipt of a ‘behind the ear’ type of NHS hearing aid.

This process is far quicker than it has been historically but there is still a lot of variance in the waiting times from area to area, sometimes the wait can be fairly lengthy.

An alternative is to pay privately for a hearing assessment with a private company like ours at Digital Hearing Care or another similar company.

A question you might ask is – why on earth would anyone pay for hearing aids when they can get one free on the NHS?  There are three main reasons; speed of delivery and aftercare, cosmetics and handling, and performance.

Speed of delivery and aftercare – when a potential client approaches us to help them with their hearing problems we can usually assess them in the comfort of their home within a week, sometimes sooner. (We are visiting clients in and around Manchester certainly a couple of times a week, for initial assessments, fittings and aftercare visits). Generally if we are contacted for a service request we try to get to clients within a couple of days or so.

Cosmetics and handling – with the best will in the world it’s hard to call the NHS issue ‘behind the ear’ type of hearing aids cosmetically attractive. Functional maybe. Some find the controls and the general design a little difficult to handle, particularly those with dexterity issues.

Performance – the NHS procurement process is a very long drawn out affair, by the very nature of the process by the time hearing aid technology arrives in NHS departments it’s already a little out of date, hearing aid technology moves very fast and each manufacturer launches newer technology every couple of years with improved performance. At Digital Hearing Care we can supply the very latest technology available from many different manufacturers, in fact thousands of different permutations of manufacturer, shape and size, level of technology etc etc. AND very importantly we have the time to spend with you to make sure the hearing aids are working at their best and as good as they can be.

And why would you pick Digital Hearing Care over any other company? We are very competitive on price, we offer the widest choice of hearing aid technology available, far wider than most hearing aid suppliers, and we really do pride ourselves on our outstanding levels of aftercare.