Dr. Egan Provides Update on Hearing Aid Industry Survey

Dr. Egan provides an update on the recent MarkeTrak survey. Learn more about that survey here: betterhearing....
Transcription:
Hi, I’m Dr. Egan from Now Hear This, and today I’m going to update you on some interesting new research that has come out by the Hearing Industry Association. The Hearing Industry Association comes out with a huge survey response article every couple years. It’s called Market Track, and it really gives insights into what is happening to the hearing industry as a whole. It first started in 1989, and it has grown to include more categories and more people, and more insights than ever before, so it’s really helpful in understanding the hearing aid industry at a large. One of the things that they revealed in their most recent survey and results that have come out, was that men continue to report higher rates of hearing loss compared to women. It’s well known that this is more common in men than women, especially when there is more occupational noise, things like loud sounds at work, or recreational noise, loud sounds at home like motorcycles, power tools, that kind of thing. We are hoping to see that it is less prevalent in men as time goes on because the armed forces have done a much better job in recent years of protecting the ears and hearing of people who serve them, and so, we are hoping to see that decline over time. We’re just unfortunately not seeing that at this point today that men are still more likely to have hearing loss than women. There are some other updates overall in 2022. 83% of people with hearing aids were satisfied with their devices, which is an increase from the past. That’s always great to see because if people have hearing loss and get hearing aids, I want them to be happy, I want it to be the right device, the right product, the right programming, that it makes a positive impact in their life. So, seeing as a whole that the industry is having better outcomes is a really good thing. Unfortunately, the industry average of 83% of people are satisfied is still well below our clinic’s outcomes that we report annually as well. 97% of our patients, when asked the same question, were highly satisfied with their hearing aids. And you know, that all comes down to best practice. This is a huge national survey and not everyone is getting the same kind of best practice, Real-Ear-Measurement programming that we do at our clinic. So, I am overall happy that the satisfaction of hearing aids is increasing. I’m not surprised it’s still below what our clinic is doing, and that’s because it comes down to doing everything the right way every single time, and we’re just not seeing that with the industry as a whole right now. The average age of someone getting their first pair of hearing aids nationally went down from 66 years of age to 60, which again is great news for me to see that people are feeling less stigma from wearing hearing aids. And I think that also comes down to all the different features and how hearing aids can make the workplace a much easier place to navigate if you do have hearing loss. So, I am glad to see that people are getting help much sooner than they used to be if that’s what they need. Of those people buying hearing aids, the survey results indicated that the vast majority are opting for hearing aids that have Bluetooth or are rechargeable and that they have higher satisfaction with those qualities as a result. And that is similar to what I am seeing in our clinic. People opt for the rechargeable hearing aids because they’re more durable. It’s not the first go-around of rechargeables, so they’re very reliable, and it’s just a lot easier to put your hearing aids in a charger at night than to remember to change the batteries every couple of days. Bluetooth is also getting a lot more advanced, so I have also seen an increase in that in our clinic, because people are getting their hearing aids younger. They are 60 instead of 66, they’re still working, they need to hear things like Zoom meetings on their computer, phone calls with clients, and things like that, so having the Bluetooth compatibility for audio streaming makes a huge difference. Overall the results have been really promising, and so I hope that everyone in the hearing aid industry continues to push this field. I hope more people do best practice, do more detailed programming, so we can continue to see better outcomes across the nation moving forward. And I hope you learned something from this video today. If you have more questions about Market Track, or the Hearing Industry Association results, feel free to contact our clinic, and if you liked this video feel free to like and subscribe for more updates on everything about hearing loss and hearing aids, and of course, have a wonderful rest of your day!