Health & Fitness
New Oak Brook Facility Program Offers Hearing Aids....For Free!
Oak Brook facility offers free hearing aids to local residents.
The economic slowdown has reached the Oak Brook community. And audiologist Dr. Ronna Fisher, Au.D knows it better than anyone.
“More and more local residents can’t afford hearing aids,” says the founder of Hearing Health Center in Oak Brook. “It’s painful to see..”
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So painful that Dr. Fisher has started a new program at her Oak Brook facility. Patients who can’t qualify for standard financing will be eligible to receive new hearing aids for free.
“These aren’t recycled hearing aids,” says Dr. Fisher. “These are new but unsold devices. We’ve purchased 100 sets of the hearing aids ourselves for $150,000. If patients come in, have a hearing problem, and can’t get financing, we’ll provide the devices for free. Patients will just be charged a small dispensing fee.”
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Dr. Fisher says all such transactions will be completely confidential.
This is just the latest initiative from the Fisher Foundation for Hearing Health Care. The organization’s mission is to enhance lives through better hearing. For eight years it’s sponsored educational events about hearing protection and provided free state of the art $150 ear plugs to soldiers deployed to combat. (Of the 1.3 million Afghan/Iraq veterans, almost 300-thousand are now on disability due to damaged hearing or severe tinnitus).
The Foundation’s good deeds are city-wide (HHC also has locations in Chicago, Naperville, and Highland Park). But Dr. Fisher never thought the need for help would ever be in the more affluent suburbs. “We’re all stretched these days,” she says. “I see it among my friends and neighbors, and I see it among my patients.”
“We have to keep innovating,” says Dr. Fisher. “We were the first center in the world to fit “in-the-ear” hearing aids and the first in the U.S. to fit the tiny “in-the-canal” aids. We’ve been peer-judged as one of the nation’s top audiology practices for the last two years.”
“But all that means nothing,” adds Dr. Fisher, “if patients can’t afford our services. This new program is my chance to give something back to the community that’s supported us since we opened here.”
* The Hearing Health Center’s Oak Brook facility is located in The Oakbrook Professional Center Bldg, 120 Oakbrook Center, Suite 709. Phone number is 847-681-7000.
