Last weekend the clocks went back one hour ushering in an extra 60 minutes of daylight at the start of the day. It’s amazing how much longer the day felt. It got us thinking about the importance of time and, crucially, the time we have available to dedicate to help our clients and support each other at Hearing Healthcare Practice. We also realised how this allocation of our time is only possible because of investment.
- Investment in developing and creating our own dedicated space.
- Investment in our wonderful team, who together combine to create a collective force.
- Investment in continually improving the equipment we have on hand to manage your care and,
- Your investment in us to provide a secure, stable, reliable and trustworthy clinic to support your hearing needs.
A Dedicated Space
A change in working pattens has seen the advent of the home office and, since 2020, the acronym WFH (Working From Home) creep into the lexicon. We’ve also seen an increase in flexible workspaces where companies rent desks in shared offices or rooms on a sessional basis. This change is even happening in hearing care with some hearing aid audiologists opting to rent a spare room in a chemist, optician or a consulting room on a sessional basis. This seems like a good idea in principle as it reduces overheads and their personal exposure to risk but, in our opinion, could impact on the quality of care on offer. This is why we opted to create the best practice we could, owned, operated and managed by our own team.
Working from a space shared with others would have put us at someone else’s mercy. If the property-owner decided they no longer wanted to rent the space to us, we’d have no protection. We’d be aligning our ability to operate with the success of others. If the landlord got into financial trouble or wanted to reclaim their space, we could be forced to vacate the offices – exposing you, our clients, to a break or termination in continuous service. This wasn’t acceptable to us.
Sharing space also means sharing staff. We’d be concerned that if a member of the support staff, such as a receptionist, isn’t directly employed by us they may be less likely to understand the specific needs and requests of our clients, how we do things or, maybe, less likely to have the same degree of commitment in going that extra mile for you.
We have made a commitment to invest in our premises and to build an aesthetically pleasing space which caters for every whim. Studies prove this creates an environment in which being together every day fosters and encourages collaboration and the spontaneous exchange of knowledge. We knew there was a need for our special approach, but we had to take the risk to build something which didn’t exist elsewhere. In a break with convention, rather than open at three different locations which would limit our risk, we chose to develop one site with three dedicated consulting treatment rooms and commissioned a one-off, custom-built soundproofed room for specialist hearing assessments. Each room is fully equipped to be state of the art, calming and a pleasure to visit. Our home was designed to be a centre of excellence, a destination hearing care clinic, where people make the conscious decision to travel and visit.
The A Team
Our next investment was to search for the best and brightest talent, creating just the right balance of individuals who when together become a collaborative, collective force. Over the years, our team has gradually changed as people have come and gone, but we have never lost sight of the need for this special relationship to continually flourish and grow.
Today’s team of Angie, Fiona, Jo, Natalie and Letitia are proof that our communal spirit thrives and lives on after forty years. Working together at Hearing Healthcare Practice has provided them with the platform to step up and be their very best, providing a truly world-class service.
Great Things Take Time
Our Practice’s success is there for all to see. We’ve survived multiple national crisies, several recessions, and even a global pandemic but we’ve remained open every weekday for 40 years – that’s in excess 10,500 days! Our longevity is down to a near-fanatical attention to detail supported by a clear appreciation of what we need to provide to support the clients who need our help.
Time is such a precious commodity and in such short supply in a world where everything is expected in an instant and on-demand. And for us at Hearing Healthcare Practice, we will always have and give our time.
Our time and our clients’ access to it, is the special key required to unlock the help our clients’ request… and is not available from technology alone. We provide an immersive, holistic approach which is heavily labour intensive. The hours we devote to the management of our clients’ treatment plans means each audiologist can only see a handful of clients each day and so this has to be reflected in our charges.
Our thoroughness is one of the major differences you’ll experience if you’re a client at Hearing Healthcare Practice. The focus elsewhere tends to be on commoditising hearing aids and on selling products, rather than clinical care and audiological guidance. Our charges reflect this difference in approach as our Practice ethos is not about attracting as many people through our doors and out again as quickly as possible. Although this is likely to bring down costs, it directly impacts on the quality of service and, crucially, patient satisfaction.
A recent study concluded “a premium practice was more important for patient satisfaction than a premium hearing aid” and this was further supported in a Which? survey that highlighted that private independent practices provide the best outcomes with the best value for money.
At Hearing Healthcare Practice, our focus has always been on providing the absolute best outcomes for our clients, backed up by robust scientific and clinical evidence. These standards have resulted in one of the highest published satisfaction rates in our profession, and a clinical approach that is continually considered the benchmark of best practice in the UK.
If you’re interested to find out more about what makes us tick and, perhaps, to become one of the thousands of converts to our approach, please get in touch. We’d be delighted to help you.