Wales Audiology Services: Future Approach Launch
The Welsh Government has announced an ambitious plan to transform audiology services, aiming to deliver more care in communities and closer to home. Hearing loss is a significant health issue, affecting 17% of people in Wales and up to 80% of those over 70. It is also the largest modifiable risk factor for dementia.
Key elements of the new approach include:
- Community-based care: Expanding audiology services in primary care to improve timely access and reduce hospital pressures.
- Skilled workforce: Continued professional development for audiologists to diagnose and treat more cases locally.
- Integrated service models: Direct access to hearing care, hearing aid maintenance, battery provision, and self-management support.
- New pathways: National implementation of dementia and wax management pathways.
- Awareness and communication: Information campaigns to support people who are D/deaf or have hearing impairments in accessing services and achieving their full potential.
The Future Approach has been produced in collaboration with all our key stakeholders from across Wales, who have been working hard to reform and extend audiology provision from secondary care into primary and community care.
Managing and monitoring more patients in primary and community care is already offering value for money. Where health boards have invested in reform, they are seeing released capacity for GPs and community nurses and reduced waiting times in hospital ENT and audiology services, in addition to improved access, experiences and outcomes for patients.
Wales Audiology Advisory Board will continue to work with health boards to steer action and support development of plans for future investment, stepped up over the next three years. This will help to further reform and implement new audiology service models, aligned to the Future Approach for Audiology Services.
Read the full paper here: NHS Wales hearing care: future approach to audiology services (WHC/2025/024) | GOV.WALES
Read the full written statement here: Written Statement: Improving Care for People with Hearing Loss: The Future Approach for Audiology Services (11 December 2025) | GOV.WALES
