Hearing Program

Young girl with brown hair being fit with a cochlear implant

The Hearing Program helps assure optimal health and functioning of children, youth, and young adults with diagnosed hearing loss. This program provides supplies for hearing aids, cochlear implants, and bone anchored hearing aids (BAHA) to facilitate healthy growth and development of language and speech. Care Coordination is also provided to help ensure the client's health care needs are met.

Eligibility Requirements

U.S. citizenship or lawful permanent residency
South Carolina residency
Age under 18 years (services available for people over age 18 with certain types of Medicaid coverage)
Household income at or below 250% of the federal poverty level or Medicaid eligible.

How to Apply

Contact your nearest regional CYSHCN office.

Questions?

If you have questions about getting services for your child with special needs, please contact us.

Info for Health Care Providers

Hearing fee schedule (pdf)

Services

example of a hearing aid held up to viewer

A hearing aid is a small electronic device that you wear in or behind your ear. It makes some sounds louder so that a person with hearing loss can listen, communicate, and participate more fully in daily activities. A hearing aid can help people hear more in both quiet and noisy situations.

A hearing aid has three basic parts: a microphone, amplifier, and speaker. The hearing aid receives sound through a microphone, which converts the sound waves to electrical signals and sends them to an amplifier. The amplifier increases the power of the signals and then sends them to the ear through a speaker.

Hearing Aids are provided for eligible clients upon request from the client’s audiologist. Hearing aid requests from audiologists must include hearing aid manufacturer, model number, type of hearing aid, number of hearing aids required, battery size, and list price of hearing aid.

Reference: https://www.nidcd.nih.gov

hands placing a small battery into a hearing aid

The CYSHCN Hearing Program provides an initial supply of eight batteries per hearing aid on all authorizations for hearing aid(s). Hearing aid battery replacements are provided to eligible clients enrolled in the hearing program.

Eligible clients should contact their Regional Care Coordinator for assistance in obtaining hearing aid battery replacements or complete the battery request form linked below and email it to cyshcn-hearing@dph.sc.gov or fax it to (803) 898-0613.

The CYSHCN Hearing program covers repairs of hearing aids, Cochlear implants, and BAHAs according to the current Hearing Fee Schedule. A request must be received from the eligible client's audiologist for the repair.

See the Hearing Fee Schedule for additional information regarding repairs.

A bone-anchored hearing aid (BAHA) is a small device that attaches to the bone behind the ear. The device transmits sound vibrations directly to the inner ear through the skull, bypassing the middle ear. BAHAs are generally used by individuals with middle ear problems or deafness in one ear. Because surgery is required to implant either of these devices, many hearing specialists feel that the benefits may not outweigh the risks.

The CYSHCN Hearing program, under contractual agreement with SC DHHS, provides BAHA replacements or upgrades as well as replacement of other BAHA supplies and/or equipment to eligible Medicaid clients. See the CYSHCN Fee Schedule for additional information on equipment coverage.

Reference: https://www.nidcd.nih.gov/

A cochlear implant is a small, complex electronic device that can help to provide a sense of sound to a person who is profoundly deaf or severely hard-of-hearing. The implant consists of an external portion that sits behind the ear and a second portion that is surgically placed under the skin. An implant has the following parts:

A microphone, which picks up sound from the environment.
A speech processor, which selects and arranges sounds picked up by the microphone.
A transmitter and receiver/stimulator, which receive signals from the speech processor and convert them into electric impulses.
An electrode array, which is a group of electrodes that collects the impulses from the stimulator and sends them to different regions of the auditory nerve.

An implant does not restore normal hearing. Instead, it can give a deaf person a useful representation of sounds in the environment and help him or her to understand speech.

The CYSHCN Hearing program, under contractual agreement with SC DHHS, provides Cochlear Implant replacements or upgrades as well as replacement of other supplies and/or equipment to eligible Medicaid clients.

See the Hearing Fee Schedule for additional information on equipment coverage.

Reference: https://www.nidcd.nih.gov/