Hearing Loss and Cognitive Decline

[Jed Grisel MD]
Yeah, I think that anytime we talk about doing something different or bringing in a new service line, there's so many logistics and historically, cognitive testing, I think has been relegated to the research arena because it's hard, you have to have a trained administrator of the test.

The traditional test had been paper pencil. So previous tests have been like the mini mental status exam and MoCA, and some of these different tests that are helpful, but the problem with them is there are some challenges with them that they take time, you have to have a trained administrator, and also if the patient is old and they don't have good dexterity or their vision is poor that affects their outcome. And so now you're testing the patient's vision and dexterity and not their cognitive abilities. And so the game changer for us to implement this in our practice has been the ability to have an automated self administered version of a cognitive test.

And that's what we've been using for the last year. And so this is a test that sits like a little kiosk in the office. It takes about five minutes for the patient to do. It's self administered. So, a technician, not a trained audiologist or even an audiology tech. In fact, our receptionists can, before they see the audiologist, can sit them in the location where we have the test and get the patient started and then the patient does everything else.
And this test has been, kind of rigorously studied and in terms of its repeatability and how valid the test is from patient to patient and from test to test. And so you kind of get rid of some of those distractions that would make the test invalid.