Experiences With Hearing Health Care Services: What Can We Learn From Online Consumer Reviews?

Perceptions of Hearing Health Care: A Qualitative Analysis of Satisfied and Dissatisfied Online Reviews

PURPOSE

The aim of this study was to examine the hearing health care experience of satisfied and dissatisfied consumers as reported on Google reviews.

METHOD

Using qualitative thematic analysis, open-text responses from Google regarding hearing health care clinics across 40 U.S. cities were examined. During the original search, 13,168 reviews were identified. Purposive sampling led to a total of 8,420 five-star reviews and 321 one-star reviews. The sample consisted of 500 five-star (satisfied) and 234 one-star (dissatisfied) reviews, describing experiences with audiology clinics, excluding reviews related to ear, nose, and throat services; other medical specialties; and those not relevant to hearing health care.

RESULTS

Satisfied and dissatisfied consumer reviews yielded nuanced dimensions of the hearing health care consumer experience, which were grouped into distinct domains, themes, and subthemes. Six and seven domains were identified from the satisfied and dissatisfied reviews, encompassing 23 and 26 themes, respectively. The overall experience domain revealed emotions ranging from contentment and gratitude to dissatisfaction and waning loyalty. The clinical outcomes domain highlights the pivotal contribution of well-being and hearing outcomes to the consumer experience, while the standard of care domain underscores shared expectations for punctuality, person-centered care, and efficient communication. Facility quality, professional competence, and inclusive care were also highlighted across positive and negative reviews.

CONCLUSIONS

Findings indicate dimensions of satisfied and dissatisfied hearing health care consumer experiences, identifying areas for potential service refinement. These consumer experiences inform person-centric service delivery in hearing health care.

Real-life and real-time hearing aid experiences: Insights from self-initiated ecological momentary assessments and natural language analysis

Introduction

Smartphone technology can provide an effective means to bring real-life and (near-)real-time feedback from hearing aid wearers into the clinic. Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) encourages listeners to report on their experiences during or shortly after they take place in order to minimize recall bias, e.g., guided by surveys in a mobile application. Allowing listeners to describe experiences in their own words, further, ensures that answers are independent of predefined jargon or of how survey questions are formulated. Through these means, one can obtain ecologically valid sets of data, for instance during a hearing aid trial, which can support clinicians to assess the needs of their clients, provide directions for fine-tuning, and counselling. At a larger scale, such datasets would facilitate training of machine learning algorithms that could help hearing technology to anticipate user needs.

Methods

In this retrospective, exploratory analysis of a clinical data set, we performed a cluster analysis on 8,793 open-text statements, which were collected through self-initiated EMAs, provided by 2,301 hearing aid wearers as part of their hearing care. Our aim was to explore how listeners describe their daily life experiences with hearing technology in (near-)real-time, in their own words, by identifying emerging themes in the reports. We also explored whether identified themes correlated with the nature of the experiences, i.e., self-reported satisfaction ratings indicating a positive or negative experience.

Results

Results showed that close to 60% of listeners' reports related to speech intelligibility in challenging situations and sound quality dimensions, and tended to be valued as positive experiences. In comparison, close to 40% of reports related to hearing aid management, and tended to be valued as negative experiences.

Discussion

This first report of open-text statements, collected through self-initiated EMAs as part of clinical practice, shows that, while EMA can come with a participant burden, at least a subsample of motivated hearing aid wearers could use these novel tools to provide feedback to inform more responsive, personalized, and family-centered hearing care.

Online Reviews of Hearing Aid Acquisition and Use: A Qualitative Thematic Analysis

PURPOSE

Online reviews have become increasingly common for consumers to share their experiences about products and to assist potential consumers with decision making. The current study was aimed to understand the hearing aid user experience from online consumer reviews using qualitative analysis.

METHOD

The study used a qualitative thematic analysis to analyze open text responses from consumers leaving hearing aid reviews on the http://www.HearingTracker.com website. One thousand three hundred seventy-eight online consumer hearing aid reviews (open-text responses) were extracted and analyzed.

RESULTS

Three domains emerged within the data set, containing 11 themes and 136 subthemes. Domain one (Clinical Processes) contained two themes: Hearing Assessment and Hearing Aid Acquisition. Domain two (The Device) contained five themes: Function, Performance, Physical, Device Management, and Maintenance. Domain three (The Person) contained four themes: Satisfaction, Quality of Life, Personal Adjustment, and Knowledge. The themes gave an understanding that there were a contribution of factors that formed part of a consumers hearing aid user experience.

CONCLUSIONS

Hearing aid users described a range of positive, negative, and neutral descriptions online about their hearing aid user experience and gave advice to fellow hearing aid users helping clinicians improve their hearing aid fitting skills in practice. These findings have implications to future product development as well as service delivery model in terms of developing strategies for fostering patient-centered audiological practice.

Utilisation of tele-audiology practices in Australia during the COVID-19 pandemic: Perspectives of audiology clinic owners, managers and reception staff

OBJECTIVE

To canvas the views of Australia-based hearing healthcare clinic owners/managers and reception staff regarding the utilisation, experiences and perspectives of providing tele-audiology services during the COVID-19 pandemic.

DESIGN

A national prospective self-report survey was completed online. Data were analysed using descriptive statistics.

STUDY SAMPLE

Twenty-one clinic owners/managers (M_age 54.43 years, 15 female) and 58 reception staff (M_age 42.88 years, 49 female) from Australia-based hearing clinics.

RESULTS

Clinic owners/managers reported an increase in use of tele-audiology services as compared to pre-COVID-19. Reception staff reported providing more advice and support to clients over the phone. Both clinic owners/managers and reception staff indicated key barriers to providing tele-audiology services to include concerns about their clients' digital and technological literacy and the perception that in-the-clinic appointments deliver better client outcomes than tele-audiology appointments.

CONCLUSIONS

The increased utilisation of tele-audiology services observed appears to be largely influenced by COVID-19 related factors (e.g. maintaining client and staff safety and increased funding). It is therefore possible that utilisation of tele-audiology service may drop once the threat of the pandemic has subsided. Perceived barriers relating to clients' digital literacy and the effectiveness of tele-audiology services require attention to safeguard the future of tele-audiology service delivery in Australia.