MP's shock at hearing aid waiting lists
Conservative Welwyn Hatfield MP Grant Shapps has surveyed nearly 100 NHS trusts throughout England and said he was "shocked" when the results came through showing waits of up to five years for new digital hearing aids.
Government ministers have admitted that queues were too long and said they will shortly publish an "action plan" to tackle the problem. However, the Royal National Institute for the Deaf fears that it could result in even longer queues for hearing aids as the pledge only applies to hearing tests.
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Comments
Seems to me that this is an attempt by Mr Shapps to score some political points over Labour. Having said that, if it results in Labour pulling their finger out and reducing the appalling waiting times it is not bad thing.
The BBC's report doesn't give much detail but it states that: "He found the average time from referral to fitting was over 40 weeks and re-assessments were taking 64 weeks." Is this saying it takes 64 weeks to get ANY modifications to your new digital aids after they have been fitted? If that is the case, there must be a lot of people enduring incorrect settings resulting in uncomfortable volume, horrible sounding pitch and probably even painful feedback. In my experience, a digital aid never gets set perfectly the first tine, there is always tweaks to be made.
Posted by: Steve Claridge | January 20, 2007 04:31 AM