Tests for hearing loss
Good hearing is vital to your relationships and quality of life. It also stimulates your brain and reduces the risk of dementia.
- Thorough, accurate hearing assessment
- Highly qualified audiologists in Melbourne
- Fully subsidised hearing tests for eligible pensioners and DVA card holders
- Workplace and pre-employment hearing tests
- Hearing tests for adults and children
- No referral needed
Hesitant about a hearing test?
You’re not alone. Hearing loss can be a sensitive subject, triggering many complicated feelings about getting older or being left behind in conversations.
Often people who suspect they have a hearing loss wait years before they go for testing. Hearing loss can sometimes be a symptom of other serious health concerns. Acting earlier can prevent underlying issues from growing worse.
Symptoms of hearing loss
If you’re living with undiagnosed hearing loss, you may notice that you’re:
Finding it very hard to hear speech when there’s background noise (this is a key symptom)
Avoiding some social situations because you can’t tell what’s being said
Withdrawing from some conversations
Suddenly surrounded by mumblers!
Struggling during phone calls (because you need to see people’s faces to interpret their speech)
Having to ask people to repeat themselves or speak more slowly and clearly
Experiencing more tension in your close relationships
Turning the TV up higher than anyone else in the family
Tired and low on energy (your brain is exhausted by the effort of listening).
If that sounds like you, then hearing loss is already having an impact on your life. It’s not going to get better by itself.
A hearing test is the first step towards a proper diagnosis and a personalised treatment plan to help you engage confidently with the world again.
A hearing test assesses which sounds you can hear across different pitches and volumes.
For you, a hearing test is usually as simple as sitting in a sound-controlled room and pressing a button when you hear a noise.
Hearing itself is complex though – addressing it requires far more than turning up the volume. When you come to one of our Melbourne clinics, you'll be seen by a qualified audiologist trained at an Australian university.
Your test results help us determine if you have any hearing loss and, if you do, its type and degree.
So, what happens if your hearing test shows that you have some degree of hearing loss?
Well, then we talk about how that’s affecting your life and relationships and recommend therapies such as:
- Communication techniques to make conversation easier
- Assisted listening devices
- Hearing technology (today’s hearing aids are impressively sleek devices).
There are a few ways of funding your hearing test.
If you have private health insurance, then we encourage you to check if your provider covers the cost of a hearing test (some do but most don’t). However, most health funds do provide funding for hearing aids should you need them.
If your GP creates a care plan for you that includes a referral to Active Audiology, then we will bulk bill your hearing test (most other clinics will still charge you a fee). Please note that you need a care plan for this, not just a regular referral.
If your ENT specialist refers you to us, you’ll also qualify for a bulk billed hearing test at our clinic.
And if you’re an eligible pensioner or DVA card holder, Active Audiology will provide a fully subsidised ($0) hearing test for you under the government’s hearing scheme.
If none of the above apply to you then the cost of a private adult hearing test is $95.
Why choose Active Audiology?
There are so many reasons but here are the top ones:
You’re getting high-quality care from university-trained audiologists, not TAFE-level audiometrists.
We’re one of the few independent audiology clinics in Melbourne. We’re not a shopfront for a hearing aid company – we’re a genuinely independent health service here to serve your needs.
We provide independent advice without pressure. We’re not here to close a sale because we’re not working on commission driven by a hearing aid maker. We never rush you into deciding about a hearing aid. As an independent audiologist, we provide impartial advice about whether or not you would benefit from a hearing aid and, if you would, which model is best suited to your hearing needs and lifestyle.
You’ll experience peace of mind and certainty through our clinical expertise and continuity of care.
If, deep down, you know your hearing needs testing, then please take the plunge. What have you got to lose?