About the Owner
Deborah Albaugh, M.A. CCC-A, a certified audiologist with 25+ years of experience, earned her master’s degree from Hunter College in New York City. Her professional experience has included traveling extensively in the past 15 years as an audiologist for an international manufacturer of hearing aids. As part of her comprehensive studies, she has traveled to Copenhagen Denmark, Oslo Norway and Paris France just to name a few. In 2002-2003 and also 2005-2006, she was recognized as a AAA Scholar, an award granted for continued professional excellence for outstanding commitment to continuing education awarded to only 3% of the professional audiology community. She maintains this dedication to continuing education by attending courses every six weeks on relevant topics in hearing care.
Growing up in a hearing impaired household, Albaugh understands how an individual hears affects the entire family. Family members and significant others are encouraged to participate in the hearing evaluation and the interactive counseling program. This progressive approach leads to better understanding for everyone.
In her innovative approach to hearing care, Albaugh implements a technique developed at NAL( National Acoustic Laboratory) in Austrailia. This technique known as the COSI (Client Oriented Scale of Improvement ) is utilized for fitting and counseling people who struggle with the use of hearing aids, those who are just beginning to use them, and those considering using them. The use and application of such a strategy improves the person’s overall satisfaction with hearing aids and gives them more confidence when using hearing the devices. It also provides the person with a gauge on how successful they can expect to be with hearing aids. It gives each person goals to shoot for in using hearing aids and keeps their expectations in check.
Another procedure Albaugh utilizes in her evaluations is Live Speech Mapping. This process insures that when a person uses hearing aids, the aids are providing a sufficient amount of amplification to hear “live speech”. This procedure is extremely important in determining the success of using hearing aids and should be done on anyone who complains that their hearing aids are not working adequately. Creating environments to simulate difficult hearing situations like hearing in a restaurant or hearing in a crowd of people can also be done. This is important so that it can be determined if the hearing aids are able to be adjusted to accommodate the more difficult areas for any one who uses hearing aids.
It is also important to realize that this test can be performed on all hearing aids, old, new, conventional or digital.
Appointments for the HearBest Test Center can be made by calling (412)341-2221. Hours of operation are Mon-Friday 9:00-4:00. Evening and Saturday hours are by appointment. Parking vouchers for both the north and south Mt. Lebanon garages are provided to all clients.