press releases

ADA – HIA Update [ March 18, 2008 ]

President David Berkey and President-Elect Charlie Stone recently attended The Hearing Industries Association (HIA) annual business meeting on March 6-7 as invited guests to represent ADA. Their address to HIA members included an update about ADA's current Vision and its benefits to Industry, projects for 2008, and a preview of this year's ADA convention in Las Vegas this November. The take-home message to the HIA members is how ADA is working to achieve greater business success for ADA members and our industry partners through increased communication, collaboration, and convention activities.

The HIA members in attendance are typically company CEOs or upper management of hearing instrument industry companies. Dr. Berkey and Dr. Stone had a number of productive conversations with HIA attendees and guests.

Apparently there had been some question regarding ADA's support of the hearing aid tax credit bill now in Congress, and both Dr. Berkey and Dr. Stone reinforced ADA's full support of this measure. Very soon BHI will spin-off a website dedicated to information on the tax credit bill, to which professionals and students can link and advocate for its passage. If passed, the tax credit would provide $500 credit for a hearing aid purchase, which is equivalent in many cases to around a 25% discount. When the site goes live ADA should link to it on our home page and individual practice websites, as well as heavily promote it to our members.

There were several educational sessions that everyone attended:

• Mary Furlong, Ed.D. (of Mary Furlong and Associates, http://www.maryfurlong.com/) presented the keynote talk entitled "Turning Silver Into Gold". Dr. Furlong's group specializes in helping corporations, entrepreneurs and investors reach the boomer and senior markets. In particular she discussed "boomer" characteristics as focusing on "vitality" in their health concerns, and on taking a more active role in their own health care. She demonstrated the use of blogs and customer ratings as they might apply to hearing aid selection by this group in the years to come, and cited a number of resources for consumer health information that the hearing aid industry might plug into..
• Sergei Kochkin, Ph.D. (Executive Director at the Better Hearing Institute – BHI) gave an update of BHI activities and summarized the public relations achievements in 2007. He indicated that work would begin on MarkeTrak VIII late in 2008, and would include tinnitus this time (as information on tinnitus is sought far more frequently than information on hearing loss, despite the high correlation between the two). He also reported on the online Hearing Loss Quick Check as part of the “Across America Hearing Check Challenge” (a modification of the AAO/HNS questionnaire of some years back). BHI is attempting to validate this instrument by contacting practitioners and asking them to administer this screening form and submit the completed questionnaire along with audiometric data for the patient (without patient names) in order to calculate the degree of correlation and proper referral criteria. If contacted to be a validation site for this, please consider participating. Finally, Dr. Kochkin announced that he is still seeking new celebrities for PSAs, along with success stories of high-profile individuals who have used hearing aids.
• Rich Galen (http://www.mullings.com/) is a political pundit who most recently served as a political strategist for the now defunct Fred Thompson campaign. He presented a humorous and occasionally irreverent view of the current presidential and congressional election campaigns.