Mature Times - Digital hearing aids

Hearing aid lists now out to 30 months

Mon, 31 Dec 2007 12:04:53 +0000

Hearing aid waiting times of up to two and a half years have been revealed by charity RNID.

Hearing tests for over 55s?

Wed, 28 Nov 2007 12:04:26 +0000

By the time most people go for a hearing test they have suffered for between 10 and 15 years with impaired hearing. Now a new report is advocating automatic screening for everyone aged 55 and over. But, asks Mature Times editor Tony Watts, will the National Health Service cope?

18 month wait for a new hearing aid – for 108 year old

Mon, 30 Jul 2007 15:55:55 +0100

One of the oldest women in the UK has been told by Eastern and Coastal Kent Primary Care Trust that she will have to wait 18 months for a new hearing aid. Olive Beal, who has six grandchildren and thirteen great-grandchildren and lives in a care home, points out that: "I could be dead by then”.

100,000 veterans first in line for digital hearing aids

Mon, 25 Jun 2007 13:13:23 +0100

Thousands of ex-servicemen and women whose hearing was damaged while serving their country will no longer have to face the ‘double insult’ of not receiving a pension for their war injuries - and then waiting up to two years for a digital hearing aid.

Half a million waiting for digital hearing aids

Tue, 19 Jun 2007 16:23:05 +0100

MPs have expressed their strong concern that some half a million people in the UK are currently waiting for hearing aids because NHS audiology is still excluded from the general 18 week target waiting times.

Pledge to cut hearing aid waits

Mon, 12 Mar 2007 15:17:49 +0000

The Department of Health has finally published its action plan for tackling the disgracefully long waiting times for NHS digital hearing aids today. Some patients, say the RNID, have had to wait as long as five years for replacement hearing aids.

So - why are we waiting?

Sun, 29 Jan 2006 09:47:47 +0000

Following last month’s article, John Beadle, a member of a patients’ forum from Kent, has contacted me about the time it takes to get an NHS hearing aid fitted in hospital – something which certainly disadvantages older people.

War deaf suffering from bureaucracy and ageism

Sun, 01 May 2005 11:10:36 +0100

MT reader Jim O'Brien recounts his problems as a hearing-damaged veteran - not only with deafness, but with the bureaucratic way in which he has been treated.

War heroes failed by NHS

Wed, 01 Dec 2004 12:38:10 +0000

Huge variations are being recorded in the time it takes for hospitals to provide digital hearing aids.

Hearing aid lists grow

Fri, 01 Oct 2004 10:25:10 +0100

Mature Times looks at how people with hearing difficulties in some parts of the UK are waiting upwards of 18 months to be fitted with a new hearing aid.