For years I went to Costco for all of my hearing aid needs. Recently after going on Medicare, I have a plan that pays for hearing aids. Not at Costco however. Aetna contracts with a company called Nations Hearing. First year I received at no cost to me base line Resounds, which is the brand that I normally use. They were a great replacement for my 5 year old battery Resounds. These are rechargeable. This year I received the top of the line Resounds, however I decided to pay a minimal upcharge fee.
This Audiologist does not do REM which I feel is important. All he has is the old sound booth that he plays tones. No masking, nothing. Am I spoiled by Costco or is REM and other tests needed? I check with my HAS at Costco and they no longer sell Resound. He offered to test my hearing again, since I am due. I feel I am not getting the full benefits of my new Resounds.
Costco sells ReSound aids which are now branded as Jabra, but itâs the ReSound One.
Went to Resound website no mention of this and also on Jabra website. That is not main focus of my question. Thanks for the info.
Sorry for to disagree @25Firefighter , but @jay_man2 has given you the exact information you need so that you can have your Resounds properly fitted at Costco. You should find his input valuable.
Find a private Audi and see if they service those aids. If so, pay per visit out of pocket if needed to get you where your fit needs to be.
A link to ReSound/Jabra that calls the latter their âsister organizationâ. Yes, Iâve understood they are âthe sameâ.
Whether other testing is ânecessaryâ is a judgement call. If your loss has always been sensorineural with no conductive loss and youâre not complaining of significant changes in your hearing, thereâs no benefit to masking that I know of. REM is considered best practices, but thereâs nothing magical about it. If your hearing loss is similar to what it was last time and your new hearing aids have similar amounts of gain to the old ones, Iâd doubt youâd see much benefit to REM. Do share your hearing challenges with your audiologist and if not getting satisfactory assistance, consider returning aids if possible. You can always try to get another audiologist to adjust them, but that can be quite challenging.
The Jabra aids that Costco sells are very similar to Resound aids. However, Costco will not adjust your Resound aids for you. They could sell you a pair of Jabra aids and do their standard fitting practices with them.
Just for my edification: would Costco not adjust the Resound aids if you paid them to do so?
Itâs been mentioned that they wonât do this, only the ones they sell, bit like they wonât sell you any accessories unless you brought the HAs from them as well.
My understanding is that they will only deal with product purchased from them. The only hard example I have is a PartnerMic purchased elsewhere that they would have nothing to do with.
They are a simple retailer and all they care about is their retail. As far as helping a client hear better and patient well being, they are not paid for that. It may sound crude but facts are facts. I asked them to read a Phonak hearing aid my neighbor had and check the settings of the Brio he bought from them against his old aid, they would not/could not do that. Simple retailer!
Is finding a different provider within the Nations Hearing network an option? Perhaps you can call ahead and ask about REM before.
@gorgeguy , as far as I know, the majority of audiologists wonât service HAs not purchased directly from them either, so I donât think that concept applies just to Costco. ÂŻ_(ă)_/ÂŻ
Correct me if Iâm wrong but he said his Medicare insurance didnât cover hearing aids purchased through Costco. Now I donât know if it does or not but if thatâs the case then shelling out $3000 in cash may not be practical
How can you tell me what the main focus of my post is? I did not purchase my aids at Costco. My questions are about REM etc.
Thank you. I value your input.
@25Firefighter: Iâm sorry - I donât have a clue what you are accusing me of. It doesnât matter anyway, since Costco wonât be able to adjust your aids, as I thought they might, at the time I posted.
Most audiologists or HIS will work with aids they did not fit, they will just charge you for their services. It is important that they are very familiar with the brand of aids, if they are not they will probably refuse to work on them.
Back to 25Firefighterâs original question, I feel REM is very important (assuming the practitioner really knows how to use it). Best practices call for âValidation and Verificationâ REM helps validate the fitting and COSI or APHAB or similar will help verify the fitting. You may be happy without the use of REM but until it is done you donât know how much happier you could be if REM is used properly.
Gus Mueller (a very well known audiologist) compared validation and verification to baking cookies. Validation is making sure you followed the recipe. Verification is when you take a bite out of the cookie to make sure it tastes good.
My audiologist didnât use REM with my fitting/set-up⌠At first I wondered about this sort of thingâŚand somewhere along the line I learned about REM. I thought it seemed like a very plausible thing to call a âbest practiceâ. As an engineer by schooling verifying performance when tweaking settings is kinda necessaryâŚ
I asked my audiologist the next time I was there, about REM. Her answerâŚmore or less⌠was basically that verification depends on the goal reallyâŚand thatâs true in this case anyway. The primary goal of the aids might be better understanding of speech, with secondary goals of things like hearing music, or hearing ambient noises. So by exploring how well I can understand speech, or how natural things in my life soundâŚor annoyingâŚor whatever I happen to experience⌠and then by adjusting the settings to optimize, youâll home in on the right settings.
When I think about the purpose of hearing aids I think that concept seems good. In my experience, after several return visits we were able to pretty much perfect my experience for my own individual needs.
I might still be having trouble understanding my young daughterâŚso she adjusted something a bit in that range to turn her up. I found that footsteps on carpet were grossly unnatural⌠change a setting to turn that down a bitâŚetcâŚ
So⌠the verification was a continued discussion about my experience.
My audi made a point that REM really becomes more important when the patient canât really accurately report their experienceâŚlike a young kid that either just doesnât understand or have the words.
In reflecting on the whole experience though, it seems to me that REM would probably be a somewhat useful tool for the initial setting, but in the end I think you still need to go through the other process.
I think about it this way
if my hearing test showed that I have theoretically perfect hearing except at one particular frequency I have a 5.2 dB lossâŚand itâs right in the range of something that I want or need to hear or understand
So my aids are supposed to amplify that one frequency exactly 5.2 dB.
REM can verify that in my ear canal the aid is doing exactly as itâs supposed toâŚ5.2dB more in my ear than the sound really is.
but
when listen to that thing I need to hear, itâs wrongâŚmaybe just not quite loud enough for good understanding.
So, the audiologist cranks up the amplificationâŚultimately landing at 5.8dBâŚand I report a perfect result.
so did REM really result in hitting the target?
This is all just speculationâŚand perhaps some logic
I havenât had the REM experience but I really would like to tryâŚ