Yes, VA provides very good audiology care IF you are. a good self advocate . They provide top-of-the line hearing aids and accessories. Cost depends on circumstances. It depends on whether or not a veteran has a service connected disability and other factors. I have seen about 6 or 8 audiologists in VA and the same in private practice. Each one I've seen has been a caring and competent professional. But in both VA and private practice one must be a good self advocate.

VA has different (higher) thresholds for CI qualification than Medicare and Social Security. One of them is that you must have greater than a 50dB loss at 500 hz and an average loss of greater than 70dB over the 500hz, 1000hz, 2000hz, and 4000hz range. For many years my average loss was greater than 70 dB but my low frequency loss was too high to qualify for a CI in VA. But I did qualify for a CI under Medicare standards. Additionally VA did their speech recognition test without noise. Other audiologists did speech recognition with noise. Now my word recognition scores are in the low 30% range bilaterally and I have been referred for a CI evaluation. Because VA is short staffed they are sending me to Community Care (a private practice audiologist) for that evaluation all paid for by VA.

I checked on private audiology clinics who do CI evaluations locally and the biggest one is not taking CI evaluation patients because of a staffing shortage. Wait time is considerable in the other two local (less than 50 miles away) clinics. Other clinics are 100 -300 miles away. VA pays travel expense though.

So I have the choice of going through Medicare or VA (Community Care). But the biggest consideration remains "Do I want to go ahead with getting a CI or not?" . I know enough sign language to get by, but I'm not fluent because I'm not a frequent user. That's an entirely different community who uses ASL.

These are just my experiences. One would assume that VA uses the same standards throughout the country. THEY DON'T. But I highly encourage veterans to consider VA for their audiology care. But VA or private practice, it is important to be an "informed patient" and a strong self advocate. Mayo Connect helps with that.

Jim