The absence of hearing benefits in company wellness plans

According to EPIC Hearing Healthcare, a benefits provider, hearing is a vital sense that, like sight, should be covered as a basic benefit. “People expect major medical will cover hearing aids, but most don’t. The cost of hearing aids can be excessive, and there’s no rhyme or reason to it,” says Dru Coleman, National Sales and Marketing Manager with EPIC.

The survey found that hearing health is absent from 92% of employee wellness programs. “Hearing health is a critically important part of employee well-being and should be included in the wellness program of any business that is serious about fostering a culture of well-being,” says Carole Rogin, Executive Director of the Better Hearing Institute. She highlights the fact that the condition is related to a broad range of associated disorders with a major impact on overall health.

But progress is being made and the article cites one exception involving teachers working at the Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools, some 6,000 staff in all. “If I’m going to offer benefits to help my teachers do their jobs better, this made sense,” said David Hines, director of benefits at the organization. “If you think about the constant noise and the drone that teachers are exposed to every day, it puts them at risk. We try to help them improve their health and their performance, and this was a low-cost way to do that.”

Importantly, the Better Hearing Institute points out that the general population and workforce is aging, and people are staying in the workforce longer, but that at the same time, new epidemiological evidence appears to indicate that hearing loss is in fact quite common among people in their 40s and that incidence is increasing among 20- to 39-year-olds.

Source: Workforce magazine