Quality Standards for Adult Hearing Rehabilitation Services

Footnotes

1. Treatment is defined as fitting of hearing aid. Fitting following re-assessment is assumed.

2. At time of writing, the national target in Scotland is 18 weeks from referral to treatment and work is ongoing on a document called principles and definitions for the 18 weeks referral target, which will help clarify how audiology services help to achieve the 18 week patient target when patients are referred on to other healthcare services.

3. Whether direct or via specialist medical service (eg ENT) referral routes.

4. This is to establish a benchmark and to gauge the service trends over time.

5. Including call centre staff if applicable

6. For example, the importance of staff introducing themselves, greeting the patient and showing empathy towards the patient.

7. Unless clinically contraindicated

8. To enable the accurate testing of normal air and bone conduction hearing threshold levels down to 0 dB HL, ambient sound pressure levels should not exceed any of the levels shown in Tables 2 and 4 respectively from BSENISO 8253-1. However, it is reasonable to relax this requirement for BC testing so as to provide for testing down to 10 dB HL by adding 10 dB to the figures in Table 4.

9. Questionnaires will always be used unless recorded as clinically contraindicated.

10. Examples of an IMP can be found in appendix 5.

11. For the purposes of this tool, the clinical record is defined as including NOAH data and descriptive text.

12. This will include referrals to other agencies (e.g. to voluntary sector, social services, advanced rehabilitation; counseling, assertiveness, lip-reading, etc).

13. This will include earmoulds selected, basic settings/acoustical characteristics of the prescribed hearing aids/s and advanced features (such as directional microphones, noise reduction algorithms and multiple programmes).

14. Electoacoustic performance will be tested directly on a test box or by using REM. The acoustical consequences of any activated feature of the hearing aid(s) ( e.g. directional microphones) are also verified where standard procedures exist.

15. E.g. the BAA, BSA and Scottish national guidelines.

16. Explained whenever IMP's are completed and recorded in patient held records.

17. http://www.vds.org.uk/tabid/232/Default.aspx

18. An example of a survey satisfaction questionnaire used by audiology services is listed in appendix 8.

19. This quality rating tool has been developed for adult audiology service providers and other interested parties to highlight best practice in rehabilitation service provision in order to ensure local audiology services meet population requirements and address health inequalities.

20. Treatment is defined as fitting of hearing aid. Fitting following re-assessment is assumed.

21. At time of writing, the national target in Scotland is 18 weeks from referral to treatment and work is ongoing on a document called principles and definitions for the 18 weeks referral target, which will help clarify how audiology services help to achieve the 18 week patient target when patients are referred on to other healthcare services.

22. This is to establish a benchmark and to gauge the service trends over time.

23. Including call centre staff if applicable

24. For example, the importance of staff introducing themselves, greeting the patient and showing empathy towards the patient.

25. Unless clinically contraindicated

26. To enable the accurate testing of normal air and bone conduction hearing threshold levels down to 0 dB HL, ambient sound pressure levels should not exceed any of the levels shown in Tables 2 and 4 respectively from BSENISO 8253-1. However, it is reasonable to relax this requirement for BC testing so as to provide for testing down to 10 dB HL by adding 10 dB to the figures in Table 4.

27. Questionnaires will always be used unless recorded as clinically contraindicated.

28. Examples of an IMP can be found in appendix 5

29. For the purposes of this tool, the clinical record is defined as including NOAH data and descriptive text.

30. This will include referrals to other agencies (e.g. to voluntary sector, social services, advanced rehabilitation; counseling, assertiveness, lip-reading, etc).

31. This will include earmoulds selected, basic settings/acoustical characteristics of the prescribed hearing aids/s and advanced features (such as directional microphones, noise reduction algorithms and multiple programmes).

32. Electoacoustic performance will be tested directly on a test box or by using REM. The acoustical consequences of any activated feature of the hearing aid(s) ( e.g. directional microphones) are also verified where standard procedures exist.

33. E.g. the BAA, BSA and Scottish national guidelines.

34. Explained whenever IMP's are completed and recorded in patient held records.

35. http://www.vds.org.uk/tabid/232/Default.aspx

36. An example of a survey satisfaction questionnaire used by audiology services is listed in appendix 8.