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Valley audiologist seeks direct access to for Medicare patients
BOARDMAN
Audiologist Eric N. Hagberg is working to improve access to hearing care at home and abroad.
Dr. Hagberg, owner of Hearing Innovations with offices in Boardman and Liberty, recently visited Washington, D.C., lobbying the area’s congressional delegation for support of the Audiology Patient Choice Act of 2014.
The aim of the proposed legislation is to provide Medicare patients with direct access to audiologists without requiring an order from a medical doctor. It also defines audiologists as physicians under the Medicare program, giving them the same status as optometrists, podiatrists, dentists and chiropractors, Dr. Hagberg said.
Other federal programs, such as the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Federal Employees Health Benefits program, allow direct access to audiologists, as do many private health insurance plans, he said.
Audiologists are licensed in all 50 states and the District of Columbia to provide nonmedical audiologic evaluation and rehabilitation services to patients of all ages, including Medicare beneficiaries. Audiologists are trained to identify potential medical conditions and to refer those patients to a physician as needed.
The issue is, without the physician/practitioner order, the patient is responsible for the cost of the services provided. Medicare patients should have the same choice and ease of access to these services as does the rest of America, Dr. Hagberg said.
“As many of the congressional staffers know someone personally who is affected by hearing loss or who relies on Medicare, they were personally touched by stories about the challenges that many of my elderly patients face on a daily basis as they try to navigate through the Medicare maze,” Dr. Hagberg said.
During his legislative fly-in on Sept. 30, he visited with health policy staff members for U.S. Sens. Sherrod Brown and Rob Portman of Ohio and U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan.
Dr. Hagberg said he described to them the importance of passing the act in order to bring Medicare in line with today’s best practices in the delivery of hearing and balanced health care services. Its passage would provide Medicare patients with enhanced care and improved quality of life, while ensuring greater efficiencies within the Medicare system, he said.
“It was easy for Congressional staff members to see that this bipartisan bill presents a common sense approach, and that Medicare’s archaic referral requirements must be modernized to allow seniors direct access to efficient, effective care,” he said.
visit to china
About a week after his lobbying effort, Dr. Hagberg was on the other side of the world, in China, as part of a group of 30-plus audiologists and volunteers from the Starkey Hearing Foundation, bringing help to more than 6,000 hearing-impaired Chinese who live under the poverty level in southwest China.
He said hearing tests had already been completed for about 6,000 people by Starkey, and 12,000 hearing aids made.
“I was there for 10 days with a group of about 10 others, fitting hearing new hearing aids provided by the Starkey Hearing Foundation to about 700 people a day,” Dr. Hagberg said.
Dr. Hagberg said some patients traveled as many as three days, some on foot, to reach one of the mission sites in the cities of Kunming, Chuxiong, Dali and Lijiang.
Along with hundreds of volunteers from China and support from the local Chinese government, The Starkey Foundation, through its “So The World May Hear” project, donated more than 12,000 hearing aids during this mission. The Starkey Foundation has donated 1.6 million hearing aids worldwide since 2000, Dr. Hagberg said.
“The gratitude of the people we helped left a lasting impression on me. Every patient thanked us profusely. This was one of the most rewarding experiences of my 40-year audiology career,” he said.
Hearing Innovations has offices in Boardman, at 755 Boardman-Canfield Road, Southbridge West, Building C-1; and in Liberty at 4300 Belmont Ave., Suite 2. Dr. Hagberg’s associate is audiologist Dr. Audra Branham, who is in the process of purchasing the business.