Revised Hearing Handicap Inventory (RHHI) in Lace Pro — Provider Guide

What's new

Lace Pro now includes the Revised Hearing Handicap Inventory (RHHI) — a clinically validated, 18-question survey that measures the social and emotional impact of a patient's hearing loss. Your patients complete it at onboarding and again on a recurring basis, and you can review their scores and full response history on each patient's profile in the Pro Portal.

If you already use the Tinnitus Handicap Inventory (THI) in Tinnitus Pro, the RHHI works the same way and the reporting panel looks and behaves identically.

What the RHHI gives you:

• A quantified, longitudinal measure of how hearing loss is affecting a patient's quality of life — beyond the audiogram.
• A consistent, validated data point to anchor every check-in conversation.
• Traceable history: every survey a patient has taken, with all 18 individual answers.

How scoring works

Patients answer each of the 18 questions one of three ways:

Total scores range from 0 to 72. A higher score means a greater self-reported impact from hearing loss.

Reading the direction of change: Because higher scores mean more impact, improvement means the score goes down. A patient moving from 38 to 24 has improved. The reporting panel reflects this — see "Change vs. prior survey" below.

When and how patients complete the RHHI

You don't need to do anything to assign the survey — it's delivered automatically.

1. Baseline at onboarding. Every new Lace Pro patient completes the RHHI during onboarding, after the intro video and before they reach the home screen. It's mandatory, with no skip option, so you can rely on having a baseline for every new patient.

2. Recurring check-ins. After the baseline, patients are prompted to retake the RHHI on a recurring schedule so you can track change over time. The frequency is set by your practice — every 1 month or every 3 months (monthly by default). Patients receive an in-app reminder and a push notification when a check-in is due.

3. Existing patients. Patients who were already in Lace Pro before this release — and therefore have no baseline — are automatically scheduled for a check-in immediately at launch, so they begin building history right away.

Reviewing RHHI results in the Pro Portal

Open a patient's profile and go to the Lace Pro tab. The RHHI reporting panel has three parts:

Score summary card. Shows the patient's most recent total (for example, "38 of 72"), the corresponding severity band, and the change versus their prior survey. The change is color-coded — green indicates improvement (a lower score than last time).

Score-over-time chart. A line chart plotting every completed survey on a 0–72 scale, one point per survey, so you can see the trend across the patient's whole history at a glance.

Full survey history. An expandable list of every survey the patient has taken. Each entry shows the date, total score, severity band, and the patient's answer to all 18 individual questions — useful when you want to see which areas are driving a change rather than just the total.

Using RHHI scores in care

The RHHI is an outcome-tracking and conversation tool, not a diagnostic test. It's designed to:

• Give you a consistent, patient-reported measure to compare across visits.
• Surface change between appointments without relying on recall ("How have things been since last time?" becomes a chart).
• Highlight specific problem areas — the per-question history shows whether difficulty is concentrated in, say, group settings, phone use, or emotional impact.

Clinical interpretation is yours; the survey supplies the data.

Survey settings (configuration)

Available to practice admins.

Practice admins can control survey behavior in the Pro Portal under Practice Settings. You configure each survey independently — the RHHI (Lace Pro) and the THI (Tinnitus Pro) have their own controls — so turning one off doesn't affect the other.

For each survey there are two controls:

• Administer survey (on / off). Whether the survey is delivered to your patients at all.
• Frequency (1 month or 3 months). How often patients are re-surveyed after their baseline. This selector applies when the survey is turned on.

Default for new practices: both surveys are on, at a 1-month frequency. If you don't change anything, the RHHI runs monthly.

What happens when you turn a survey OFF:

• New patients skip that survey during onboarding.
• Any pending reminders for that survey are paused.
• Existing survey data is retained — nothing is deleted, and you can still view past results in each patient's reporting panel.

What happens when you turn a survey ON (or back on):

• New patients receive the survey during onboarding.
• Scheduling activates at the frequency you selected (1 or 3 months).

Tip: Changing the frequency affects how often patients are prompted going forward. It doesn't remove or alter surveys a patient has already completed.

FAQ

Do I have to assign the survey to each patient? No. The baseline is delivered automatically during onboarding, and recurring check-ins are scheduled automatically.

Can a patient skip the baseline survey? No. The onboarding RHHI is mandatory, so you'll have a baseline for every new patient.

A patient says they got a survey reminder late at night — is that expected? No. Notifications are not sent between 9 pm and 8 am in the patient's local time. If a patient reports an off-hours notification, contact support.

What happens if a patient taps "Later" on a reminder? They get one more reminder about 24 hours later. If they still don't complete it, the system waits for the next scheduled check-in cycle.

Can I change how often a patient is surveyed? Yes, if you're a practice admin. In Practice Settings you can set each survey to a 1-month or 3-month frequency, or turn it off entirely. See "Survey settings (configuration)" above.

Can I turn the RHHI off but keep the THI on (or vice versa)? Yes. The two surveys are configured independently in Practice Settings.

If I turn a survey off, do we lose the data already collected? No. Turning a survey off stops new surveys and pauses pending reminders, but all previously collected results are retained and remain viewable in the patient's reporting panel.

Is the RHHI the same as the THI in Tinnitus Pro? They're different validated instruments (hearing handicap vs. tinnitus handicap), but they share the same survey and reporting experience, so the Pro Portal panel will feel familiar.

Contact Neurotone support at support@neurotone.com