Northgate Hearing Services Information

Selecting a qualified hearing healthcare provider is one of the most important keys to your success. Proper hearing aid recommendation and fitting is highly dependent on the judgment and skill of the professional selecting your hearing aids. Furthermore, you will be forging a long term relationship with this individual and practice, just as you do your doctor or dentist. Our audiologists are Doctors of Audiology, or are candidates for the doctorate degree, which means they have received, or are working toward, an Au.D. (Doctorate of Audiology) degree from an accredited university graduate program. Doctors of Audiology provide in depth diagnosis of auditory pathology, make recommendations, and provide non-medical treatment (typically hearing aid fitting and hearing loss counseling) or make referral for medical treatment. In contrast, hearing aid dispensers (typically located at Miracle Ear, Beltone, Costco and shopping malls) are licensed in hearing aid dispensing only and can do hearing screening solely for the purpose of fitting a hearing aid. The entry level requirement for hearing instrument dispensers in the state of Washington is a two year associates degree. In order to stay abreast of rapidly evolving hearing aid technological advances, each of our audiologists is committed to a minimum of 25 hours annually of continuing education.