Quick Tips: Virtual Surgical Support

Here is a fact that may surprise you: Cochlear has been providing Virtual Surgical Support since 2014! We have a world-class surgical team with exceptional experience who are available and dedicated to assist surgeons and operating room (OR) staff before, during and/or after Cochlear surgical cases.

What areas of support does our virtual surgical team provide?

Real-time OR surgical support for Cochlear’s hearing implants including Cochlear™ Nucleus® Systems, Osia® Systems and Baha® Systems
Pre-Surgical planning prior to a procedure
Post-Surgical discussions
SmartNav and intra-operative diagnostic support

Virtual support from Cochlear’s surgical team provides flexibility when in-person assistance isn’t possible. Their expertise reinforces existing knowledge, addresses questions promptly, and contributes to outstanding results in the operating room.

Visit our online booking page to schedule surgical support. We also suggest bookmarking this webpage for easy access in the future.

Best practices for hearing implant surgical approvals, appeals and advocacy

April 11, 2019

By guest author: Nicole Craig

Obtaining commercial insurance coverage for implantable hearing solutions can present unfamiliar challenges for your office as this may be a limited portion of your practice. Although most commercial plans cover cochlear implants and osseointegrated bone anchored systems, each plan follows their own medical policies and prior authorization requirements. In addition, each plan may have different coinsurance, deductibles, and out of pocket maximums based on each individual member’s benefit coverage.

A division of Cochlear Americas, Otologic Management Services (OMS) is a dedicated team of reimbursement specialists who are available, at no-cost, to help healthcare providers and candidates obtain the necessary insurance approval or to support appeals where coverage has been denied for Cochlear’s Nucleus® Cochlear Implants or Baha® Systems for medically qualified candidates.

As experts in medical insurance advocacy, OMS has an extensive knowledge of health insurance plans. With over 56 years combined industry experience they understand that not all insurance policies are the same. OMS partners with candidates and healthcare providers to provide navigational support of the health insurance maze.

Join us for a webinar to learn some best practices you can implement to help navigate through the insurance maze successfully and effectively advocate for insurance coverage for your patients. Each session will have an OMS representative as well as a Regional Reimbursement Manager available to answer questions.

Surgical Approval, Appeals and Advocacy Best Practices Webinar Dates:

4/30 11 am MST

8/20 12:30 pm MST

12/20 1 pm MST

Email OMS@cochlear.com with the specific date to register.

About our guest author:

Nicole Craig is the Senior Manager of Managed Care and Market Access for Cochlear Americas. She oversees OMS and managed care contracting for Cochlear’s external DME replacement parts and accessories. Cochlear offers coding assistance through the Coding Support Line accessible by calling 1-800-587-6910 between the hours of 8 AM – 3 PM Mountain time zone or via email at codingsupport@cochlear.com. For pre-surgical insurance support, OMS is available to assist with pre-authorizations and appeals and can be reached at 1-800-633-4667 option 4.

Journal Club: Musical training improves the ability to understand speech-in-noise in older adults

October 30, 2019

By Justin Piraino, Au.D, Sr. Manager Data Strategy and Analytics, Cochlear Americas

In today’s busy clinical environment, clinicians who value research-based practice often struggle to keep up with current literature. To help, we’re excited to offer a new ProNews Blog monthly feature – Journal Club! Each month, rotating guest authors will present a current journal article summary.

This month’s Journal Club explores a recent Canadian study published in the Neurobiology of Aging, Musical training improves the ability to understand speech-in-noise in older adults.As an audiologist and individual with hearing loss (hearing aid and cochlear implant user), any way to improve the ability to hear in noise for patients or myself is certainly worth my attention. This research can encourage patients who aren’t feeling successful with their hearing loss treatment to engage in rehabilitation exercises.

What did the study investigate?

This study looked at the causal impact of music lessons on older adults. The researchers were interested to determine whether the causal relationship between short-term musical training and performance on auditory test improved hearing and therefore could be suggested to improve hearing in non-musicians.

Why is this important?

These findings support the idea that musical training provides a causal benefit to hearing abilities. Importantly, these findings suggest that musical training could be used as a foundation to develop auditory rehabilitation programs for older adults.

How did they do it?

Below summarizes the key elements of study design and demographics:

A three-arm, single-blind longitudinal training study with random assignment
34 individuals aged between 55 and 75
Participants were randomized into three groups using a stratified covariate-adaptive procedure. The groups include:
- Piano training group (Music)
- Video game training group (Video)
- No-contact control group (No-contact)

Participants took part in three testing sessions:
- The pre-training session (Pre) took place before the intervention, the mid-training session (Mid) took place three months after the start of the intervention and the post-training session (Post) took place six months after the onset of the intervention. During the Pre, Mid and Post sessions, participants completed a series of auditory and cognitive assessments.

Results

Based on the study, six months of self-directed music lessons improved the ability to understand speech in background noise in older adults.

This improvement was related to an increased positivity over frontal-left electrodes from 200 to 1000 ms after the onset of a word. These results suggest that musical training can be used to improve the ability to understand speech-in-noise in older adults by improving how older adults process speech and deploy their attentional resources to speech stimuli.

Discussion

The most critical finding from this study is that music lessons improved the ability to understand speech in noise for older adults.

First, it demonstrates that musical training may have a causal role in improving hearing abilities in older adults. This provides support for previous cross-sectional work demonstrating that older musicians have an advantage in understanding speech in noise compared with older non-musicians¹.

Second, it highlights that the brain remains plastic in older adults and is susceptible to modification based on one’s life experiences. In the current context, this is critical as hearing difficulties in older adults are nearly universal², and one of the most commonly reported hearing difficulties is understanding speech in noisy environments.

Accordingly, the results of this study demonstrate that music-based auditory rehabilitation is likely to be successful in older adults in improving their hearing abilities.

Learn more about musical rehabilitation implications by accessing the publication here and stay tuned for next month’s edition of Journal Club!

References

Parbery-Clark, A., Anderson, S., Hittner, E., Kraus, N., 2012. Musical experience offsets age-related delays in neural timing. Neurobiol. Aging 33, 1483.e1-4.
Gates, G.A., Mills, J.H., 2005. Presbycusis. Lancet 366, 1111e1120.

*All figures and tables are from the reviewed article.