Hearing benefits could make or break your health plan

Over the past two years, employers have become increasingly aware of how vital healthcare benefits are to employee productivity, retention and overall company success. Yet, employers may still be missing a part of the healthcare picture.

Approximately 48 million Americans have some degree of hearing loss, but very few Americans have access to hearing healthcare benefits. According to Tuned, a hearing healthcare benefits platform, while 92% of the workers they surveyed received health benefits from their employer, less than 30% have hearing care included. And in an era of constant calls and virtual meetings, employers may be doing their employees and their company a big disservice, says Danny Aronson, CEO of Tuned. 

“We now have a workforce of tens of millions of people working from home, using headphones up to eight hours a day,” says Aronson. “You don’t need to be a doctor of audiology to understand there’s going to be an impact on people’s health.”

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One notable consequence is auditory fatigue, where an individual experiences discomfort or loss of sensitivity in their ears after being exposed to prolonged auditory stimuli. In Tune’s survey, 74% of workers admitted to experiencing auditory fatigue by the end of the workday, and 61% shared that they needed to take breaks due to fatigue. Listener’s fatigue is often more associated with those who work in manufacturing, construction or even music. However, as remote work pushes employees to make extensive use of their headphones and compete with the noise of their environment, Aronson predicts that knowledge workers will find themselves more at risk for hearing fatigue and hearing loss. But, he does not believe all hope is lost — people just need care.

“Hearing benefits should be part of standard benefits along with vision, dental and mental health,” he says. “We need employers to understand the importance of hearing care. After all, when it comes to communication, hearing is the most basic and most important tool you have.”

Aronson points out that hearing health often only becomes a consideration for those past the age of 65 who are experiencing severe hearing loss. On top of that, the healthcare business model in the U.S. often makes it so providers need to provide a service or treatment to be reimbursed by insurance carriers and make a profit. In audiology, this means selling hearing aids, which can range from $2,000 and $6,000, is often the goal of the provider even if the patient could better benefit from other interventions, explains Aronson. 

That’s why Tuned’s audiologists (healthcare professionals who specialize in hearing and balance disorders) are compensated for meeting with patients and advising them, but not on the products they may or may not recommend. Although Tuned does feature audiologist-vetted products like specialized headphones and apps that support behavioral change for hearing health, Tuned is not paid to recommend the products.

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“Manufacturers cannot buy a place on the platform and audiologists do not have any skin in the selling game,” says Aronson. “That’s not the traditional healthcare model, where if I didn’t sell you a product, I didn’t get any revenue.”

For Aronson, it is important that Tuned offers a wide range of care, from simple advice on how to adjust headphone audio settings on the patient’s phone and laptop to hearing aids if needed. Just adjusting the vocal range or boosting the sound of high frequencies in one’s phone can allow the listener to lower their overall volume and reduce hearing fatigue, explains Aronson. 

For those who have tinnitus, which is the periodic or constant ringing in one or both ears, a personalized management plan and apps like Tinnibot could help alleviate the stress and confusion that often accompanies the constant internal noise. Notably, Tuned’s survey found that 30% of employees have experienced an increase in tinnitus symptoms since the beginning of the pandemic.

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“Think of hearing like reading,” says Aronson. “If I take off my glasses, I can see, but my eyes need to go through that much more effort to be able to see clearly and focus. It’s the same with hearing.”

In order to know what hearing tools the patient needs, everyone is asked to do a three-part hearing screening: a clinical questionnaire, a pure tone test where one listens for the beeps they can hear at certain volume and frequencies and a digits and noise test, where patients have to pick out the numbers they hear amid simulated background noise. Once the screening is complete, an audiologist will discuss the results and how to either address hearing health concerns or preserve their current hearing health. 

Aronson, who has moderate hearing loss himself, believes that if people took part in annual hearing screens and had access to hearing health education, hearing loss and fatigue would not have to be so inevitable. According to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, one in three people in the U.S. have hearing loss between 65 and 75 years old. 

“You usually screen your hearing in middle school and then when you’re 65, but what happens during those years in between? You’re not destined to have hearing loss — employers just need to make the connection between communication and productivity and hearing care.”