Acquisition of hearing aids and assistive listening devices among the pediatric hearing-impaired population

Sufficient access to health care is of concern to the indigent population i n the US and to their health care providers. This study was undertaken to e lucidate the rate of the follow-up among lower socioeconomic hearing-impair ed pediatric patients who had received a recommendation for hearing aids an d/or assistive listening devices. Our question was, would the families' fin ancial situation have a negative effect on the acquisition of hearing aids and assistive listening devices? Fifty patients, age 0-18 years, who had be en seen in our clinic over 2 years were evaluated via a telephone survey. T he survey consisted of seven questions, including whether or not the device s or aids were obtained, what type was purchased, where the device was bein g used, and the child's apparent performance with the device. Eighty-two pe rcent of our patients were on TennCare, a state mandated Medicaid HMO syste m. Two-thirds of these TennCare patients are at or below the poverty level and the remaining one-third is either disabled or uninsurable according to the Aid for Dependent Children (AFDC) with indeterminate income. In additio n the TennCare organization did not cover hearing amplification equipment f or these children. The study showed that the majority of the patients did f ollow-up as recommended. Furthermore, this equipment is easily obtainable f or the pediatric indigent population due to financial resources available i n the community outside the mandated Medicaid system. (C) 2000 Elsevier Sci ence Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.