NEW YORK STATE HEARING AID DISPENSING ADVISORY BOARD

MEETING SUMMARY

December 19, 2016

The meeting was held at the Department of State, 99 Washington Avenue, Albany;123 William Street, NYC; and, 65 Court Street, Buffalo.

I. INTRODUCTIONS, ROLL CALL AND QUORUM ANNOUNCEMENT

The meeting was called to order at 10:30a.m. W. Clark took roll call and declared there was not a quorum present. The official attendance was as follows:

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BOARD MEMBERS

Peter Fisher

Florence Butler

Ana Kim

Excused:

Sally Atkins

Anthony Macera

Kathleen Cassidy

Shawn Newlands

Anne Orsene

EX-OFFICIO BOARD MEMBERS

Whitney Clark, representing

Rossano Rosado, Secretary of State,

Board Chair

James Hinds, representing

MaryEllen Elia, Commissioner,

NYS Education Department

Jonathan Curtin, representing

Howard A. Zucker, MD, JD,

NYS Department of Health

DEPARTMENT OF STATE STAFF

Amy Penzabene

Mary Jo Moore

Ernita Gantt

Dave Mossberg

Jodi DeLollo

Marc Mastrobuono

Denise Tidings

Sharon Charland

VISITORS

Barbara Ahern, Hearing Health Care Alliance of NY

(HHCANY)

Fred Goossen, HHCANY, International Hearing Society (IHS)

Jerry Bergman, Hearing Loss Association of America

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  1. SUBCOMMITTEE AND DEPARTMENT REPORTS –
  1. Processing Report – J. DeLollo provided statistics regarding the registered/licensed hearing aid dispensers and businesses from December 7, 2015 to date.
  1. Exam/Education Subcommittee Report – D. Tidings reported the Department recently updated the hearing aid dispensing licensing written examination to reflect the new syllabus. Implementation of the new exam will be January 2017. Dave Mossberg has been working on the Education subcommittee initiative for mandating continuing education in the area of telecoil and assistive listening technology.
  1. Telecoil Subcommittee update – D. Tiding reported the subcommittee has been working on information that will be disseminated to licensed businesses to help raise awareness of their responsibility to inform consumers on the telecoil feature and other assisted listening technologies. The Division will send some of these documents to Division of Administrative Rules for review and to have printed. Once this has been completed, the board will be provided with a copy for review and approval.
  1. ACTION ITEMS –
  1. Approval of meeting summaries - meeting summaries of March 16;June 22 and September 28, 2016 could not be approved because there was not a quorum.

IV. NEW BUSINESS

  1. W. Clark stated the Division will have a new Enforcement initiative in 2017 which will include an audit of CE for all disciplines. The board will be continuously updated on the Division’s progress.
  2. W. Clark encouraged board members to bring forth initiatives and topics for 2017.
  3. P. Fisher inquired about current board openings. The board was encouraged to submit resumes of candidates to the Division.

V.PUBLIC COMMENT PERIOD

Fred Goossen asked the Division to review the composition of the board. He recommended the Infection Control CE remain at 2 hours and the NYS Law and Federal Regulations CE be amended to emphasize the requirement in Article 37A for patient education regarding telecoils. He stated the HHCANY strongly opposes the FDA’s proposed action. Mr. Goossen expressed an interest in volunteeringas a subcommittee member to work on drafting registration requirements for out of state dispensers. Members of the board and DLS staff volunteered to be on the subcommittee.

VI. ADJOURNMENT

The meeting was adjourned at 11:10a.m.