What hearing services do you offer?

Hearing screenings, diagnostic audiometric testing, hearing aid fittings, and follow-up care.

Do you work with veterans and VA benefits?

Yes. We help eligible veterans access hearing care and hearing aids through applicable VA programs.

How often should hearing be tested?

Adults should have a baseline test and periodic re-checks, especially with noise exposure or noticeable changes in hearing.

How do I book an appointment?

Call (424) 204-2382 or email info@audiology4vets.com to schedule.

Audiology 4 Vets | Community Hearing Care for Veterans

Hearing care for the veteran community.

Audiology 4 Vets brings casual, community-centered hearing care to veterans nationwide. Walk-in mobile clinics at VFW posts, easy access to hearing aid fitting and verification, Veterans Choice coordination, and tinnitus counseling — no paperwork hassles, just straightforward hearing health support for those who served.

Educational

Why Hearing Is the Number-One Claim in the VA System — and What That Means for the Veteran Next Door

In the VA's annual benefits reporting, tinnitus ranks first and hearing loss fifth among all service-connected disabilities. More than 3.2 million veterans receive compensation for tinnitus and more than 1.5 million for hearing loss. Those are not niche figures. In a VFW post of two hundred members, the arithmetic says a large share of the room is living with one or both.

The reason is structural rather than incidental. Impulse noise from weapons, sustained noise from aircraft and armor, engine rooms, generators, and flight lines all sit well above the exposure levels that damage hair cells, and hearing conservation programs were uneven for much of the period today's veterans served in. Damage accumulates quietly; the veteran often notices the tinnitus first and the hearing loss years later, usually because a spouse points it out.

What that prevalence should change is how communities respond. A screening is a fifteen-minute conversation, not a medical event, and it is the step that converts a vague suspicion into a documented threshold. From there a veteran has something to take to VA audiology — and something a claim can be built on if the exposure is service-connected.

Sources: Hearing Health Foundation — veterans; VA Research — hearing loss fact sheet

September 1, 20268 min read

Informative

The Tinnitus Rating Rumor, Answered Plainly for Post Meetings

This question comes up at nearly every post visit, so here is the plain version. The VA proposed in February 2022 to stop rating tinnitus as a standalone condition. That proposal has not been finalized. Diagnostic Code 6260 is still in the rating schedule, recurrent tinnitus still carries 10 percent, and there is no announced effective date for any change.

What the proposal would do, if adopted as written, is require tinnitus to be attributed to another ratable condition — most often hearing loss — rather than standing alone. Notably, veterans with a service-connected hearing loss rated at 0 percent could still see a 10 percent award where the tinnitus is diagnosed as linked to it. The scenario people fear most, a blanket removal of the benefit, is not what the text describes.

Our advice has not changed: file on the evidence you have, keep the audiogram current, and describe the tinnitus in your own words — onset, pitch, when it interferes with sleep or conversation. Nothing about an unfinished rule is a reason to delay a claim, and a well-documented file is the best insurance against whatever the final version says.

Sources: CCK Law — tinnitus claims; VA — disability compensation

September 1, 20266 min read

Field Notes

Field Notes: What a Post-Hall Screening Day Actually Looks Like

Set-up is a folding table, a calibrated portable audiometer, insert earphones, and a quiet-enough corner — which in a VFW hall usually means the room behind the kitchen, after we have measured the ambient noise floor rather than guessed at it. Ambient noise is the single thing that invalidates a community screening, and it is the easiest to get wrong.

The screening itself runs about fifteen minutes: otoscopy, pure tones at the screening frequencies, and a short conversation about tinnitus and noise history. Everyone leaves with a printed result, whether or not it shows a problem, because the printed result is what makes the next appointment happen.

The pattern we see most is not severe loss. It is a high-frequency notch in someone who is convinced their hearing is fine and whose spouse is convinced it is not. That notch is the classic noise signature, and catching it early is the whole point of doing this in a post hall instead of waiting for a clinic referral that may be years away.

Sources: ASHA — hearing screening; CDC — noise and hearing loss

September 1, 20265 min read