An ad hoc Institute of Medicine committee will address how to improve accessibility to and affordability of hearing health care for adults, excluding surgical devices and related services:

Specifically, the committee will:

Provide a contextual background addressing the importance of hearing to individual and societal health, productivity and engagement. This may include issues such as isolation, social connectivity and well-being, and economic productivity.

Address federal regulations for hearing aid dispensing: The current federal regulations include the requirement for a medical evaluation by a licensed physician (or a signed waiver of this requirement) prior to the dispensing of a hearing aid in order to promptly identify treatable medical conditions that cause hearing loss.

• Do the current regulations provide a clinically meaningful benefit to adults with hearing loss?
• If so, does this benefit outweigh any current barriers to accessibility or affordability that may be associated with the current regulations?
• What should be the required federal regulatory paradigm for the dispensing of hearing aids?

Address hearing health care access and affordability:

• How can affordability of hearing health care, including consideration of third-party payment and alternate hearing assistive technologies and/or services, be improved?
• How can current delivery models (system and provider) be utilized or modified to improve access to hearing health care?
• What innovative health care delivery approaches (e.g., telehealth, mobile health, team-based care) can be used to increase both the access to and affordability of hearing health care?
• What are the specific challenges for select populations (e.g. older adults, transitioning young adults)?

Provide recommendations aimed both at solutions that are implementable and sustainable in the short term as well as those that may require a longer timeframe for implementation. In the circumstance where robust evidence is lacking or absent, the IOM committee is encouraged to make recommendations based on sound scientific reasoning in the context of the current healthcare environment.

The committee will not address pharmacological therapies for hearing health care.