Insurance may cover your HEARING AIDS
It’s almost year’s end, but there is still time to book an appointment toward your 2018 insurance. Call TODAY!
The end of the year will be here before we know it. Have you met your health insurance deductible? If you have reached your deductible, this is a great time to visit your audiologist for a diagnostic hearing evaluation. Hearing is part of your overall health and well-being and should be considered a medical necessity. “Many people don’t think about insurance when they think about hearing aids,” says Dr. Megan Johnson, Audiologist and owner of Johnson Audiology. Johnson Audiology’s lead billing specialist Cindy Rice states, “Our billing experts are trained to research individual policies and verify benefits and coverage. According to Rice, “Some individual insurance policies, whether private or through a workplace plan, help with the cost of hearing services, and some provide a dollar amount toward the cost of a hearing aid(s). Johnson Audiology wants to help you understand and utilize your insurance coverage for hearing aids.” Taking control of your hearing health starts with a diagnostic hearing evaluation. A true diagnostic audiologic hearing evaluation is very detailed, provides an overall picture of a patient’s hearing loss and can only be performed by an audiologist. The initial one-hour appointment is face-to-face time with your audiologist. “Our goal at Johnson Audiology is to do the legwork regarding insurance benefits so we can present the information at your evaluation, along with the test results and our recommendations,” says Dr. Johnson. If hearing aids are recommended, the audiologist will determine the specific devices that address a patient’s unique needs and will order the appropriate hearing aids before your fitting and orientation appointment. “This initial evaluation begins your journey to better hearing,” Dr. Johnson says. “Because of this multi-step process, we encourage patients who have met their deductible and are considering hearing aids to make their diagnostic appointment now rather than waiting until the end of the year,” Dr. Johnson says. Johnson Audiology accepts a wide variety of insurance types. “Additionally, our audiologists are required to remain educated on the appropriate insurance codes required for efficient and correct billing of audiology services,” Dr. Johnson says. Rice adds that “these codes are updated annually to best fit the changing diagnostic procedures and diagnoses that are available. As a contracted provider with Medicare and many other insurance companies, we follow their strenuous guidelines for proper filing of hearing healthcare services.” “Insurances that provide hearing aid benefits do so in a variety of different ways. Having a trained billing specialist who knows exactly what questions to ask your insurance company allows our patients to be able to use the hearing aid benefit provided by their insurance, even when they weren’t aware that a benefit was available. Our goal is to offer as many options as possible to our patients for funding their hearing health care. Working with all types of insurance coverage is just one more way we seek to do that,” says Dr. Johnson. Understandably, knowing every benefit your insurance offers can be a daunting undertaking for a patient. Dr. Johnson says that is why “Johnson Audiology seeks to be your area’s insurance experts as it relates to hearing health care.”