About the Center

In 2004 Dr. Simon C. Parisier, the founding director of CHI, joined with Ronald A. Hoffman, MD, Director of Otology at Beth Israel Medical Center and Jane R. Madell, PhD, CCCA/SLP, Cert-AVT, Director of Beth Israel's Hearing, Speech, Language & Learning Center, to form The Beth Israel/New York Eye and Ear Cochlear Implant Center.

The "Whole Child" philosophy defines The Beth Israel/ New York Eye & Ear Cochlear Implant Center as a model of its type. Here, ongoing support services enable children with profound deafness and mild to severe hearing loss to develop normal speech and language skills and to succeed in complex acoustic environments. Thanks to research conducted by this and other centers, infants as young as nine months can now be implanted with cochlear devices.

The Center's hallmark is a team approach in which staff experts work collaboratively for the comprehensive care - and ultimately, the quality of life - of each patient. Services include diagnostic audiology, hearing aid evaluation and dispensing, speech-language therapies including auditory-oral therapy, auditory-verbal therapy, therapies for auditory processing disorders and educational consultation. Medical services include otolaryngology evaluation and genetic evaluation and counseling. Successful fulfillment of these services necessitates an expert staff, including:

- Audiologists, who evaluate hearing, fit hearing aids, provide hearing aid training and counseling, perform pre-cochlear implant evaluation, perform cochlear implant programming, participate in intra-operative cochlear monitoring, and dispense and evaluate adjunctive devices, such as telephone adapters and FM systems.

- Speech-Language Pathologists, who evaluate speech, language and hearing skills for infants and children and provide speech/language and hearing therapy pre- and post-implants.

- Psychologists, who conduct psycho-educational evaluation to assist in evaluating learning skills and determining optimal learning strategies.

- Social Workers, who meet with families during the evaluation process to discuss expectations and provide supportive services post-implant. They assist family members in doing all they can to encourage a child with hearing loss to flourish and succeed.

- Bi-lingual services: The Center offers H.O.L.A., the only comprehensive, hospital-based Spanish-language program for communicative disorders in the New York metropolitan area, providing diagnostic, surgical and rehabilitative services for children experiencing problems of Speech (Habla), Ears (Oidos), Language (Lenguaje) and Hearing (Audicion).