Uhring’s Hearing & Balance

The immediate reaction I had when I found out I was nominated – I was shocked. Never in my wildest dreams, after being an audiologist for 35 years, did I think that I’d be nominated for something like this. Then I read the bios for the other people nominated and I was humbled beyond description as well. I just couldn’t believe it. I still can’t believe it.

There are so many things I wish I knew when my husband and I first started out in business. The things that I know now that I didn’t know in 2008. If patients want to try a different type of hearing aid by a different manufacturer, we do that, and we’ve just always done that. We never thought that was a big deal, but we found out over the years that not everybody does that. I think that makes us a little bit different.

The other thing that I find we do that’s very different and I’m kind of proud of is we do a one-time free meet-and-greet to everybody who walks in the door that comes in with a hearing aid from out-of-state or that has just moved to the area. We’ll clean and we’ll service that hearing aid, we’ll introduce ourselves, tell them what our services are and there’s no charge. You would not believe the positive feedback we’ve gotten from that. People seem to be really appreciative.

The other big thing we’ve been doing for about a year or two is on one day a week, we go into the local retirement villages and nursing homes because it’s easier for us to get out to them than it is for them to come to us because a lot of these people don’t drive. We’ll go in for an afternoon and we will either set up a schedule or it’s a walk-in clinic and we will take all the supplies that we can, and we will do free cleanings and that’s all we do. We just clean the domes, change the filters, brush them off. We have a little tiny vacuum that we take. We find that Community care, giving back to the Community, has just been phenomenal for us and phenomenal for them. It’s good for our reputation and we don’t think anyone else does that or if they do it, they don’t do it for free. We do it at completely no cost to any of these retirement communities.

What inspired us to take an innovative approach to our practice? In all honesty, I have to say it’s out of respect for our team. We have the most amazing group of people that we work with. They work so hard and they go above and beyond every single day. What we wanted to do is find a way to help them work smarter, not harder. So, we’ve taken this innovative approach of block scheduling. With the help of CQ, we’ve allowed our providers to set up what their passions are to make sure they have the opportunities to see the kind of patients that they prefer and to take control of their day.

It’s really out of respect for them because I could not find a better group of individuals to work with on a daily basis. Once they had control of their own schedule and had control of their own passion, they’ve just gone crazy. We have had one of the best financial years that we’ve had in a long time, and I really think it’s because we’ve changed. We’ve listened to CQ and we’ve added some of these services and devices to be more innovative and it’s helped all of us.

I’m a funny story when it comes to patient feedback. A couple of years ago one of our competitors in town was selling their practice and we said no for quite a while. Eventually, we ended up buying the practice and when we first bought it, we didn’t change the name. It was the same providers, so we were kind of our own competition, which is kind of funny. By doing that, it really allowed us to gather useful information from patients. Patients would go to the other office, and they’d say, “Boy, those Uhrings. I don’t know if I like them. Every time you go, you see somebody different.” We didn’t know that was a problem, so we took that feedback directly from patients. Then, when people started calling Uhring’s Hearing and Balance and asking for an appointment, we would always ask:

  • Which provider do you want to see?
  • Do you have a preference?
  • Do you want to see Doctor Uhring, Doctor Hoy, Doctor Boonie, etc.?

This has allowed us to look at a specific provider’s schedule, give that information to the patient, and see if they’re okay with an appointment, say, three weeks out. If it’s an emergency, we can put the patient with who is available and ask them if they are okay with that.

Some of the other valuable patient feedback we’ve gained is we have people who really want to be seen at 7:30 in the morning. I don’t want to see people at 7:30 in the morning, but another provider has no problem with that. Since we’ve gotten this feedback, we’ve been able to allow people to open up their schedules to see patients at, say, 7:30 in the morning or 6:00 at night.

Through our website and CQ’s help, we now have online scheduling. If you’re at home after dinner and realize you need to make an appointment for a hearing test, you can actually go on our website and make an appointment. That’s all been from patient feedback. Also due to patient feedback, we’re now offering auditory processing therapy through telehealth and remote care. Someone had mentioned that they lived very far away, so we set this up.

All of these changes have come from direct patient feedback. We’ve taken it all to heart and we’ve tried to make as many changes as we could to address the needs of our community.

One of the things we might do differently than other offices is we have monthly incentives, quarterly incentives, and we have a yearly incentive. Out of our entire crew of 14, we got to bring 10 people to Reconnect ’25. We’ve also met our financial milestones well enough for the past two years that we’ve been able to take the entire office to the Finger Lakes for a four-day weekend. We get to relax and have a really good time. We really enjoy each other’s company, both inside the office and outside the office, and we’re proud of that.

Even a month later it still doesn’t seem real. I absolutely love what I do and the impact we make on people’s lives. To help people hear better and communicate with their loved ones is just an amazing feeling. That alone is a phenomenal award! Being nominated was fantastic but to be awarded by such a group of hard-working and deserving professionals was truly beyond words. Again, I didn’t do this on my own. My entire team made this happen!

I truly believe we came back on the ultimate high! Our team is the best you will ever find. Since we have been back, we have had several discussions as to what we can do next. How can we make our office better? Today the office had a meeting as to what practices from Reconnect can we start implementing immediately. We have a follow-up next week. We have also started a three-part “book club” where we are all going to read the book Radical Candor so that we can all communicate better among ourselves.