Early Hearing Detection and Intervention (EHDI)
- EHDI Home
- Roadmap for Success
- Find a Minnesota Provider
- Resource Binder for Families - What you Need to Know (PDF)
- Resources for Families
- Contact Us
Parts of EHDI
- Medical Home
- Inpatient Screening
- Outpatient Screening
- Out of Hospital Births
- Pediatric Audiology
- Specialty Care
- Early Intervention
- State EHDI Program
Related Programs
Contact Info
Medical Home
Closing The Follow-Up Gap: Medical Home
Role of the Medical Home
According to the Joint Principles of the Patient-Centered Medical Home, March 2007, "The Patient-Centered Medical Home (PC-MH) is an approach to providing comprehensive primary care for children, youth and adults. The PC-MH is a health care setting that facilitates partnerships between individual patients and their personal physicians, and when appropriate, the patient's family."
"The medical home concept includes these characteristics: accessible, continuous, comprehensive, family-centered, coordinated, compassionate, and culturally effective care."
The role of the primary care provider in EHDI: "The primary care physician must assume responsibility to ensure that audiological assessment is conducted on infants who do not pass screening and must initiate referrals for medical specialty evaluations necessary to determine the etiology of the hearing loss." Joint Committee on Infant Hearing, 2007
Tips for Improvement
Misconception: Parents can tell if their child has a hearing loss by the time their child is 2-3 months old.
Clinical Fact: Before newborn hearing screening, most children were not found to have a hearing loss until 2-3 years of age. Children with milder hearing loss were not found until 4 years of age.
Misconception: Hearing loss risk factor assessments will identify all children with hearing loss.
Clinical Fact: As many as 50% of infants born with hearing loss have no known risk factors.
Misconception: If infants pass the newborn hearing screening, they do not require ongoing hearing surveillance.
Clinical Fact: It is estimated that by school age, new cases of permanent hearing loss occur in approximately 6 per 1000 children in addition to the 3 per 1000 likely to be detected at birth. American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. Guidelines for audiology services in the schools. ASHA. 1993: 35(suppl 10); 24-32.
Misconception: There is no rush to identify hearing loss.
Clinical Fact: Children identified with hearing loss after 6 months of age are more likely to have speech, language, and cognitive delays than children identified before 6 months. Children identified early can avoid these delays through evidence-based early intervention programs.
Myths vs. Clinical Facts of Newborn Hearing Screening and Early Diagnosis
Resources
National
2019 Joint Committee on Infant Hearing Position Statement
AAP Early Hearing Detection and Intervention (EHDI) State Chapter Champions
Clinical Practice Guideline: Otitis Media with Effusion (Update) 2016
Hearing Assessment in Infants and Children: Recommendations Beyond Neonatal Screening, 2009
Early Hearing Detection and Intervention (EHDI) Guidelines for Pediatric Medical Home Providers
Clinical Practice Guideline: Tympanostomy Tubes in Children, American Academy of Otolaryngology, 2013
Minnesota
MN EHDI Patient Checklist for Primary Care Providers
Hearing Screening Follow-up Process
Guidelines for Hearing Screening After the Newborn Period to Kindergarten Age
Guidelines for Primary Care and Medical Home Providers
Screening Resources For After The Newborn Period:
Hearing Screening Training Manual for use in Child and Teen Checkups (C&TC), Early Childhood Screening, Head Start, and school-based programs
Otoscopy and Tympanometry Manual for use in Child and Teen Checkups (C&TC), Early Childhood Screening, Head Start, and school-based programs
Training Opportunities
Meeting The Needs Of Physicians In Support Of EHDI (Non-CEU) (NCHAM)
Resources for Improvement
Strengthen Care Coordination
Newborn Hearing Screening Fact Sheet
EHDI Patient Checklist for Primary Care Providers
Early Hearing Detection and Intervention Coding Fact Sheet for Primary Care Pediatricians (AAP)
Bright Futures Coding for Preventive Care (AAP)
Minnesota Department of Health, Health Care Homes
Clinic Quality Assurance Checklist
Sharing Child Information to Coordinate Early Childhood Special Education (ECSE) Referrals Guide
Engage Families as Partners
EHDI Parent Resource Binder features the Parent Roadmap and offers more in depth information about hearing loss. Any child living in Minnesota that is newly identified with a hearing loss will receive a printed copy of this resource binder.
Does My Child Have a Hearing Loss? Emergency & Community Health Outreach (English) (Hmong) (Somali) (Spanish)
Partnering with your Doctor The Medical Home Approach: A guide for families of children with special health care needs - Region 4 Midwest Genetics Network (English) (Spanish) (Arabic)
Connect to Community Resources
Minnesota Department of Human Services: Deaf and Hard of Hearing Services
Local Public Health - County Agencies
Minnesota Hands and Voices: Resource Directory
Training Opportunities

"Although most pediatricians believe that they have primary responsibility for follow-up planning for children who do not pass their hearing screens, they frequently do not have the access they need to screening-test results or to the results of any subsequent diagnostic evaluations."
Improving Follow-up to Newborn Hearing Screening: A Learning-Collaborative Experience
Giving Your Baby a Sound Beginning
Giving Your Baby a Sound Beginning (video is captioned) - 06:24

Review Newborn Hearing Screening results at first Well Child visit
Confirm that follow-up appointments have been scheduled
Complete the Patient Checklist for Primary Care Providers with families who need further screening for hearing loss
Ensure follow-up appointments are completed and results received
Complete Parent Roadmap for families with a child identified with hearing loss
Streamline authorizations to eliminate delay to specialty providers such as ORL, ENT, and genetics
Offer and provide referral to Minnesota Hands & Voices
Refer to Early Intervention through Help Me Grow
Respond promptly to Minnesota Department of Health requests for follow-up information and plans