Home hearing tests in South East London

Reaching a high street branch is not always straightforward. A bus route with two changes on it, a hip that has seen better days, a husband or wife who cannot really be left alone for an hour: any one of those turns a twenty minute appointment into the best part of a day. So across South East London the hearing test slips down the list, month after month, while the hearing itself carries on fading.

Testing at home takes the journey out of the equation. What follows is the detail: how the appointment runs, the prices, who tends to book one, and which parts of South East London sit on HomeSight's regular rounds.

Who a home hearing test is for

Anybody inside the coverage area is welcome to book. That said, most people who choose a home visit do so because a branch appointment is genuinely awkward:

• Anyone unable to leave the house without someone alongside them
• Anyone whose mobility, or a long-standing health condition, makes travelling hard work
• People living in care homes, in sheltered accommodation or in supported living
• Relatives taking charge of hearing care for a parent who will not get round to it alone

No referral is required. Nor does it matter if your hearing has never been tested before. Family and carers are free to sit in on the appointment, and where two people under one roof both want testing, the pair of them are seen on a single visit.

One thing to flag: HomeSight's home hearing service covers adults, meaning 18 and over. Home eye tests are a different matter and do take younger patients, so mention it on the phone if the appointment is for a child and you will be directed to the right place.

What happens when the audiologist arrives

Whoever comes to you is registered with the HCPC, and the clinical equipment they bring packs down small enough to travel. They set up wherever suits, which is usually a dining table or an armchair in the front room. Furniture need not be moved and nothing needs preparing, beyond finding a room that is reasonably quiet.

A screening is the brief version. The audiologist examines inside both ears and establishes whether your hearing sits where it should for someone your age. Should it do, that is said out loud and nothing more is needed.

Where a fuller picture would help, the complete assessment runs to roughly ninety minutes and takes in:

• Otoscopy, a look inside both ears, which turns up earwax at least as often as it turns up hearing loss
• Pure-tone audiometry, the familiar beeps across different pitches, which map the shape of your hearing
• Speech-in-noise testing, nearer to real life than beeps are, and frequently the thing that explains why a crowded room is such hard work
• Tympanometry, a check on how the eardrum and the middle ear are performing

Everything is talked through with you in ordinary language before the audiologist leaves, and your audiogram is yours to keep. Worth knowing in advance: on HomeSight's own figures, roughly one assessment in six turns out normal for the patient's age. Where that is the finding, it is stated plainly and no product is pushed at you. There is more on how a home hearing test works if you want the full picture first.

What a home hearing visit costs

Those figures are the whole of it. No call-out fee sits on top, and the travel to your door is not charged for. If the assessment does point towards hearing aids, your audiologist goes through the package choices against your hearing, how you actually live and what you can spend, and the £30 already paid is taken off the price.

Is a home hearing test available on the NHS?

We are asked this more than anything else, and an honest answer comes in two parts.

Hearing care at HomeSight is private. Neither the assessment nor the aids themselves come out of NHS funding, so if an NHS-funded route is what you are set on, this is not the service for you. That route usually begins with your GP, who refers you into a hospital or community audiology department, though a few areas let some adults refer themselves. A number of NHS services will visit patients at home where travel is impossible, and the wait varies quite a lot from one area to the next, so put the question to your GP about what your own borough offers.

What the private fee is actually buying is pace and continuity: nobody is queueing, the audiologist who assesses you is the one who fits and follows up, and the aids are rechargeable models from the Widex and Rexton ranges currently in production.

Eye care is a different story. There HomeSight holds an NHS contract, and an NHS-funded home eye test costs a qualifying patient nothing at all. A good number of people put an eye test and a hearing screening into one appointment, which is worth bearing in mind while you weigh up the money.

Where HomeSight visits in South East London

Greater London is covered in full, and the regular rounds through the south east of the city take in Bromley, Bexley, Dartford, Croydon and Sutton, together with what surrounds them. Visits run further out into Kent and Surrey as well, and patients are seen in private houses, in care homes, in sheltered schemes and in supported living.

Treat those town names as the regular routes rather than a hard edge. Not seeing your town is no reason to assume the answer is no: give a coordinator the postcode and you will know one way or the other on the call. Everywhere is set out on the areas we visit page.

If you already wear hearing aids

Starting from scratch is not a condition of booking. Most trouble with hearing aids is not a fault in the first place. A flat battery, a tip worn down, tubing that has blocked, a receiver clogged with wax: between them these account for the bulk of aids that go quiet, and all of them can be put right at your own table.

For a £45 home visit the audiologist cleans the aid thoroughly, re-tubes it where it is the kind that uses tubing, fits fresh wax filters and domes, runs a listening check, works through whatever is going wrong, and re-programmes the aid wherever the manufacturer's software permits. That flat fee holds for most of the major brands, aids bought from somewhere else entirely included. Anything falling outside that standard service, custom tips for example at £90 apiece, is priced up and agreed with you before a tool comes out. The hearing aid servicing and repairs at home page has the rest.

Where the aids have simply reached the end of their life, an assessment at home will establish that too, and you can look into hearing aids fitted at home before committing to anything.

When earwax is the real problem

This is worth stating bluntly, because it keeps money in people's pockets. A fair share of patients who ring up about fading sound have wax in the ear canal rather than any loss of hearing. It is the first thing looked for, during otoscopy, before a single test is run.

Where wax is the culprit, earwax removal at home is £80 for the visit and both ears get examined. Your audiologist explains which approach is the safest one for you, be that microsuction, irrigation or specialist manual instruments. Hearing is often back to normal before the afternoon is out.

How to book

Two ways in: ring 0800 080 6095, or book a home visit through the website. Reckon on two minutes. The coordinator takes your postcode, establishes which services you are after, and names the soonest date somebody is working your way.

Typically under a fortnight passes between that call and the visit. Anything urgent gets dealt with on the phone, so do say if something has changed suddenly.

Frequently asked questions

Do I have to be housebound to have a home hearing test?

Not at all. Visiting people at home is the entire service rather than a concession within it, so anyone in the coverage area can book one for any reason. The housebound test belongs to NHS-funded eye examinations and has no bearing on a private hearing appointment.

Is a GP referral needed?

No. A home hearing visit can be arranged directly, over the phone or through the website.

How long will the appointment take?

A screening is quick. Allow about ninety minutes for the full assessment. Where hearing aids follow, fitting them is a separate and shorter appointment, and there are then two more, one a fortnight afterwards and one six weeks on.

Can someone from the family be there?

Yes, and it tends to help. Relatives and carers are welcome throughout, and a second person listening to the results is seldom a bad idea.

Can two people at the same address be seen?

Yes. Couples, housemates and relatives sharing an address are put into one appointment between them.

And if my hearing turns out to be fine?

You will be told so. On HomeSight's own figures, about a sixth of first assessments land in the normal band for a patient of that age, and either way the screening has cost you nothing.