General Office Policies
We Are Pleased To Serve You
Welcome to Shohet Ear Associates. We are pleased that you have entrusted us with your care. What makes us unique? Our practice teams a physician highly skilled in the care and surgery of the ear with audiologists who provide a full range of audiologic services, including hearing tests and dispensing of hearing aids. Shohet Ear Associates can diagnose and treat any medical condition of the ear. We specialize in the very latest treatments and offer cutting-edge technology to help diagnose ear problems.
We hope you will find your visit to our office a pleasant one. The information below will help expedite your care. Patient satisfaction is our Number One goal. Please let us know if there is anything we can do to enhance our service to patients.
Your Appointment
We see patients by appointment Monday through Friday, 8:00am – 5:00pm. Early appointments (at 7 am) are also available on Mondays and Thursdays, for your convenience. Call (949) 631-HEAR (4327) to schedule an appointment. Our receptionists are available daily 8:00 am to 5:00pm to help you.
Ear appointments are of two types:
- Complete Hearing Exams or Initial Evaluations may last between 45 minutes to an hour-and-a-half, depending on the amount of testing needed, so please allow ample time.
- Follow-up Examinations or Post-operative Checks can last between 5 and 30 minutes.
On your first visit, it is necessary to arrive 15 minutes early to fill out the paperwork necessary to begin a permanent medical record, if you haven’t already done so. We will need the following items on your first visit:
- A list of your current medicines and medication allergies, if applicable
- All applicable physician notes and lab results. This includes actual radiology reports and films (CT scan/ MRI)
- Your insurance card or HMO referral/authorization letter
We try our best to stay on our schedule, but emergencies sometimes do arise. If we are seriously delayed, we will try to notify you beforehand. Please assist us by being on time for your appointment. Occasionally we may call patients in the waiting room out of turn if they are urgent or postoperative exams. We ask you for your patience if you have to wait; we know your time is valuable.
Hearing Exams
We will need to have some objective formal documentation of your hearing status at the time of your visit. For those patients with a perceived hearing loss, ear infections, ringing or roaring in the ear and/or dizziness, a formal hearing test by an audiologist within the past 3 months is required. If you have not had a formal hearing test, we will ask that one be performed by our audiologist at the time of your visit. There are many instances in which a gradual hearing loss may not be perceived. Identification and documentation of a subtle or overt hearing loss with a formal audiogram is necessary for a complete ear examination.
Canceling an Appointment
If you are unable to keep your appointment or are going to be late, please call our office as soon as possible. When surgical emergencies occur, it may be necessary for us to suddenly cancel appointed office hours. We acknowledge how inconvenient this may be for you and will do our best to meet your needs when rescheduling your appointment.
Referrals
If you have been sent to Dr. Shohet by another doctor, please tell us so we may provide him or her with a report. We do not charge for this service. If you have not already told us how you found us, we will ask at the time of your visit. Thank you for providing the most accurate referral information as possible.
Emergency Care
If you have an urgent problem, please call our office for instructions. In a true, life-threatening emergency, it is best to call 911 first.
Telephone Calls
Once treatment has begun, we may ask you to call us to report on your condition. Dr. Shohet’s assistant will take this information and give you instructions. We encourage our Orange County and Los Angeles patients to call our office if you have any questions regarding your condition, medication, prescription refill, etc. If you need to speak with Dr. Shohet personally, our office personnel will have him return your call when conditions permit.
Patient Satisfaction
At Shohet Ear Associates, we want to provide you with the highest quality care possible. And we believe that commitment includes delivering an unsurpassed level of service to our patients. Our Number One goal is your complete satisfaction with your experience as a patient.
In order to continue offering a high level of service, we regularly survey our patients on their experiences within our office. The responses are used to enhance the care we deliver and the office practices we use. At the end of your visit, you will receive a self-addressed and stamped survey for you to complete and return. We greatly appreciate your responses and assure you we will continue to strive to exceed your expectations as a patient.
Downloadable Forms
Patient Forms
Complete These Forms Before Your Visit
Please complete the New Patient Information Form and the Patient Health Survey before coming in for your appointment at our medical center located convenient to Orange County and Los Angeles.
New Patient Packet
Privacy Notice
If you have tinnitus or ringing/roaring in the ear, please fill out the following forms:
Tinnitus/Hyperacusis History
Tinnitus History Questionnaire
Tinnitus Functional Index
Tinnitus Reaction Questionnaire
If you have dizziness, vertigo, or poor balance, please fill out the following form:
Vestibular Questionnaire
Dizziness Handicap Inventory
Financial Arrangements
Finance your way to Better Hearing
When you purchase a hearing aid at Shohet Ear Associates, we provide Complete Hearing Health Care©, which offers the most comprehensive bundle of hearing aid services available today. All of the items and services required to assure a successful fitting are included in the initial cost. All of the following items are included in the price of your hearing aid:
- Impression of the ear to order the hearing aid
- Two-year warranty on the hearing aid which includes repairs and one-time loss/damage coverage
- Quarterly cleanings and adjustments
- Yearly audiometric screenings, hearing instrument reprogramming, ear cleaning by a physician
Billing Policy
Most hearing aids and hearing aid services are not covered by health plans, but some may offer a partial benefit. If you think you may have a hearing aid benefit, please notify us so that we may verify your benefits at the time of your visit.
Shohet Ear Associates is in-network for a number of health plans. However, we are out-of-network for health plans associated with Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare) purchased by you or your employer through the Exchange. The following are common Exchange policies: Covered California, Pathways, Market Place, etc. We are not contracted with these. If you have concerns that you may not be covered, please contact your insurance or your employer. Our office will attempt to help with any insurance question you may have.
Regardless of the type of hearing loss or model of hearing aid, a hearing aid must be ordered to fit the shape of the ear and meet each patient’s hearing loss needs. Consequently, the following billing policies apply:
- It is customary that ½ of the total cost of the hearing aid(s) be paid for at the time of the hearing aid evaluation. The remaining balance is due on the day of the hearing aid fitting (approx. 2 weeks after initial appt)
- Payments can be made in the form of cash, check or Mastercard/Visa
- You are given a 30-day trial period. During that time period, you may return the hearing aid and the price of the hearing aid will be refunded, minus the cost of the professional services. Professional services will include the cost of the hearing aid evaluation and fitting fees
Privacy Statement
Your Privacy Is Important To Us
We have created this privacy statement in order to demonstrate our practice’s commitment to privacy. The following discloses our information gathering and dissemination practices for this Web site: www.eardoctor.org. The information we receive depends upon what you do when visiting our Web site.
If you visit our site to read or download information, such as articles or brochures:
We collect and store only the information about you: the name of the domain from which you access the Internet (for example, aol.com, if you are connecting from an American Online account, or Princeton.edu if you are connecting from Princeton University’s domain); the date and time you access our site; and the Internet address of the Web site from which you linked directly to our site.
We use the information we collect to measure the number of visitors to the different sections of our site, and to help us make our site more useful to you and other visitors.
If you identify yourself by sending an E-mail:
You may also decide to send us personally identifying information, for example an electronic mail message containing a question. In addition, the forms on our site require users to give us confidential information, unique identifiers, and demographic information. This information is used only for the internal purpose of serving our patients’ needs better. This information is not shared with any other organization(s) without your explicit written request. This site maintains security measures intended to protect the loss, misuse and alteration of the information under our control. We want to be very clear: We will not obtain personally identifying information about you when you visit our site, unless you choose to provide such information to us.
WARNING: This site contains links to other sites. www.eardoctor.org is not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of such Web sites.
Contacting the Web Site
If you have any questions about this privacy statement, the practices of this site, or your dealings with this Web site, you can contact our medical center near Los Angeles:
Shohet Ear Associates
(949) 631-0409