Acoustic Associates provides professional surveillance of industrial audiometry as required by OSHA. This service is intended for:

1. Clinics who conduct audiometric testing, but do not conduct the baseline-annual audiometric analysis as required by OSHA, or
   

2. Companies who conduct their own audiometry, but have no qualified physician or audiologist on staff to interpret and review audiograms.

To ensure your program meets OSHA requirements (or the more strict NIOSH criteria), we can audit your instrumentation, forms, test protocol, and training procedures. For initial audiograms, which become the original baseline test, we identify pre-existing losses and describe the degree, laterality, and pattern of the hearing loss. We can also determine if previous noise exposure is evident.

For annual audiograms, we can advise you how to screen the tests for professional review. In our review, we identify significant hearing shifts, recommend retests, attempt to rule out noise exposure, and suggest baseline revisions.

We are also able to perform all the required data management. In this scope, you simply fax us the audiograms after each day of testing. You keep the original for documentation. We then enter the data in our own, proprietary database and examine each test for shifts and anomalies. If potential are identified, we notify you immediately so you have a chance to perform retest audiograms as soon as possible or as appropriate.

When all the testing is complete, we then generate a color-coded sheet (seen below) that shows our comments and recommendations for each employee. Recommendations colored red indicate action you need to take. STSs (shifts) to be recorded on the new OSHA Log are highlighted in yellow.

We can support your program in other ways as well. For example, we conduct noise exposure surveys, perform diagnostic (independent) exams in our clinic to assess if the hearing loss is work related, review hearing protection policies, and analyze audiometric and exposure records to evaluate workers’ compensation liability. If you would like to discuss your needs in more detail, be sure to contact Dr. Thunder directly.