Your provider closed. Your hearing aids still work.

What can be done here

• Adjustments and reprogramming, including devices fitted elsewhere
• Routine cleaning and maintenance — which is most of what goes wrong
• Wax guards, domes, tubing, receivers, filters
• Troubleshooting and minor repairs
• Sending a device back to the manufacturer when it needs that instead
• Annual hearing evaluations to keep the programming current
• Supplies

Most “broken” hearing aids are not broken

A hearing aid lives in a warm, damp, waxy environment and is expected to keep working for five years. The overwhelming majority of devices that have “stopped working” have a blocked wax guard, a split tube, a dead receiver, or a microphone port full of debris. Most of those are a ten-minute problem, and a good number of the hearing aids sitting in drawers on this island would be working tonight if somebody looked at them.

Programming that has drifted

Hearing changes. If your devices were programmed four years ago against a five-year-old audiogram, they are amplifying for a version of your hearing that no longer exists. This is the single most common reason somebody says their hearing aids “stopped helping” — the aids are fine, the prescription is stale.

A current evaluation plus a reprogram frequently gets people more improvement than a new pair would, at a fraction of the cost. It is worth ruling out before you shop.

If you bought them somewhere else

Perfectly normal, and not a problem. Dr. Loschen works with most hearing aid brands and has the programming software and hardware for all seven majors. She will check that what you already own is performing as well as it can before suggesting anything new — which is a different conversation from the one you get at a place that only makes money on the sale.

There is one honest limit: a small number of devices are locked by the practice or chain that sold them, so nobody else can reprogram them. If yours turn out to be one of those you will be told plainly, along with what your options actually are.

Continuing care after a closure

Island Hearing Services can take over your ongoing hearing care entirely: annual evaluations, adjustments, cleanings, repairs and supplies, on-island, with the same person every time. Nothing about the transition requires you to change devices.

If you would rather start with a proper look at where your hearing is now, that is a hearing evaluation.