VA Employee-developed Hearing Loss Calculator Has 100-percent Accuracy

Despite his heavy schedule, [Renford] Patch still found the time to exercise his computer programming skills and last year developed a hearing test calculator to automate the steps for determining compensation owed for varying degrees of hearing loss. Mike Walcoff, VA's acting undersecretary for benefits, told a media roundtable that the hearing loss calculator Patch developed works so well that VBA has rolled it out for use system-wide.

Patch said the hearing calculator, which he wrote in Visual Basic code, analyzes audio metric data from a hearing test and then determines whether a veteran has a hearing loss, the extent of the loss in terms of decibels, and the level of disability. The calculator then generates a narrative text file, citing relevant regulations for payment.