Dave Fabry Ph. D., Eden Prairie, Minnesota (USA)
Video 5 2018
“TeleAudiology improves clinical outcomes at every stage of the ‘patient journey’”
Teleaudiology, the remote provision of audiology services, is a manner of practice that aims to improve accessibility, affordability, quality, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness (WHO, 2010).
Since 2014, a staff of clinical audiologists have been providing “virtual” consultations that augment face-to-face clinical interaction with a hearing aid technician. As part of each virtual consultation, the virtual audiologist reviews
audiometric information, device selection, and provides follow-up consultation after the initial hearing aid fitting. The presentation will highlight results that demonstrate the following:
Improved patient satisfaction: average satisfaction improved when compared to face-to-face care only.
Lower return for credit: a 56.4% success rate when virtual consultation was used with patients who already made the decision to return devices.
This presentation will also provide details and preliminary findings for an asynchronous teleaudiology application used for remote fine tuning after the initial fitting. This solution provides clinicians with a complete package of interactive and cloud-based teleaudiology care to augment conventional care while achieving the larger objective of improved clinical outcomes.