The HPC or Health Professions Council is the new regulatory body responsible for Registered Hearing Aid Dispensers (R.H.A.D.’s). They have a published set of guidelines aimed at setting a benchmark of standards that ALL registered hearing aid dispensers must work to. They have taken over the previous role of the H.A.C. (Hearing Aid Council).
Simply put, hearing aid dispensers are tasked to being ethical in carrying out their role in the prescription of private hearing aids to the general public. The HPC are the new governing body tasked to look after the general public’s interests and well being when buying private hearing aids.
In the past, present and now in the future, hearing aid dispensers have and are always going to be held accountable for their actions and methods in giving ethical accurate advice when selling hearing aids. The HAC of past have been criticised by dispensers of being too avaricious for their own good. The reasons behind this are related to not only the high subscription fees that dispensers had to pay but also in the degree of punishment that was dealt out because of minor offences. No matter what the feelings of dispensers are, “the deliverance of punishment should always fit the crime”.
When some internet companies offer an unacceptable and potentially inaccurate standard of hearing tests, hearing aid programming and nonexistent but necessary rehabilitation and aftercare service, it makes a “mockery of our profession”. It therefore must be shouted as loud as possible from the highest hilltop. If a body such as the HPC are prepared to put hearing aid dispensers and companies to task for malpractice, then they should also be given power to deal with the scandalous practises that occur daily on non policed Internet sites. After all the hearing aid purchasers are the very people the HPC are designed to protect and are the ones that are being misled about what ethically might be right or wrong.
If you are unhappy with your hearing aids, do not despair as the H.P.C. ARE there to help you. If you do not gain satisfaction from hearing aids that you have purchased online or from the company you purchased them from, then please contact the H.P.C. because they are there for you.
We welcome comments from customers seeking advice on this matter or from dispensers who have their own opinions or stories.
Call us on 0800 0304 542
