JFK Medical Center The Center for Audiology

“Five years ago, after my last pair of HAs went on the fritz, I came to JFK for another hearing assessment and a new set of hearing aids. The hearing assessment went well, state of the art equipment. After getting the new HAs, a pair of Phonak Marvel M70-R (read: expensive), it seemed, in 20-20 hindsight, that there wasn't much improvement. After a month or so, my spouse began to periodically note that she thought that the old ones had been better. Over the next years, I thought this was just my hearing getting worse. (Which it probably was.). This year, I'm retired and am on a Medicare Advantage plan, which had a HA benefit. Found out that JFK wasn't in-network any more, so found a nearby in-network fellow. On the first visit, my spouse came with me and, louder and louder, kept on pointing out that these hearing aids weren't doing me much good. As she did so (with my apologetic concurrence), this fellow's eyebrows kept on going up and up. "Didn't you try to adjust them?" "Well, I did tell the audiologist a week later that there wasn't much improvement. The only adjustment is for volume, period." His reaction: That's strange: These are the first generation Good Ones - there's all sorts of adjustments you can make!". I looked at him funny. "What adjustments?" He took them from me. First: They were three firmware updates out of date. Hearing aids are basically small computers: Updates fix bugs and introduce improvements. I had been going to JFK periodically over the past five years and nobody had said anything about this. Second: He added a bunch of new, previously unknown presets to the hearing aids and the app: Auto, Restaurant, Music & TV. Each of those have sliders that adjust a plethora of things: Equalizer (i.e., frequency response), volume, noise reduction, speech focus (narrow or wide in front of one), and dynamic range. Changes in the standard presets can be saved under new names. Nobody at JFK, when I got these HAs, or in the years following, mentioned that _any_ of these adjustments, by the user, were possible. I was in shock. That evening the spouse and I went to dinner at a pretty noisy restaurant. FOR THE FIRST TIME IN YEARS I COULD UNDERSTAND WHAT SHE WAS SAYING. And this was _without_ changing the basic frequency response of the aids - just putting the things into "restaurant mode". In the six weeks since this happened my life has changed, for the better. I can hear the dialog at movie theaters; I can hear what friends are saying, on and off the phone. I don't have the hearing of a 20 year old (that's not going to happen, period), but it's made a major difference in my life. Without changing hearing aids. I retired last year. Some of the reason (by no means all) was that I was having trouble talking to co-workers. And thinking of not hearing my daughter's vows at her wedding last year.. If I had even a _hint_ that the hearing aids were capable of this, I would have been all over it, being the techie that I am. I'm furious with JFK. This Was Their Job. And They Didn't Do It. For Years. What the heck? I suppose there is a _kind_ of an excuse: When I got these things, they were so new that my actually getting them fitted, 'way back then, was delayed a week while the software to adjust them was installed on their PC. (Something about the PC's being locked down) But that still doesn't excuse them never telling me about the advanced features of the hearing aids over the following five years. And never updating the firmware, either, something that on these hearing aids mere mortals cannot do.”

“I went there to get ear impressions done so I could get custom musicians' in-ear monitors made. They weren't willing to work with the in-ear monitor company, to get the impressions done, which was the whole point of going there. So what I ended up doing, so it wouldn't be a waste of time, was I got some molded musician ear plugs. So I still haven't gotten my in-ear monitors, so I'm using cheap ones and I can't hear the band that well. ”