Most patients with tinnitus are told there's nothing to be done. That's rarely true — but until now there hasn't been a simple local pathway for it. We built one, and it starts with measurement.
For primary care
What happens after your referral. Every tinnitus patient receives booth-calibrated pitch and loudness matching — we measure the actual frequency and character of what they hear — plus a full audiologic evaluation and the Tinnitus Functional Index, a validated questionnaire that quantifies how much the tinnitus is affecting sleep, concentration, and quality of life. Patients who enter our management program are tracked weekly and re-tested at twelve and twenty-four weeks against improvement thresholds we fixed before collecting any data.
Your safety net, in writing. Any red-flag presentation — pulsatile tinnitus, unilateral or markedly asymmetric tinnitus, sudden onset, or tinnitus with neurologic signs or sudden hearing change — is escalated to otolaryngology directly from our chair, documented back to you. Referring here first never means a dangerous cause gets missed; it means it gets caught with a hearing test already in hand.
What lands in your chart. An intake report within one business day: audiometric summary, tinnitus measurements, Tinnitus Functional Index score, and the plan. If the patient enters management, a twelve-week outcome letter follows with measured change against threshold. Two letters, no chasing.
What to tell the patient today. "There's a local specialist who can actually measure this and has a structured program for it." That sentence is the whole referral.
For otolaryngology
You've done the workup. Imaging is clean, the ear is healthy, and the patient still hears it. Send us the patients you're done with medically: we run the structured program above, you receive the outcome letter at twelve weeks whether the news is good or not, and anything that develops red-flag features comes straight back to you. This program extends your care — it doesn't compete with it.
Two ways to help, depending on your patient
Refer directly — fax your referral to 912-296-0212. Questions about a referral? Call our office at 912-386-1023. Full details on what to include are on our referring providers page. Tinnitus referrals are seen within a week.
Or start with the app. RidRing, our free tinnitus tool, lets your patient measure their tinnitus in about three minutes on their own phone — pitch, character, and whether it can be masked — and try a relief sound the same day. Hand them the card or point them to ridring.com. Patients who need more than self-help are guided toward expert care, and results travel with them to any visit. It costs your office nothing and takes ten seconds.
Our numbers, honestly
We publish our definitions before our numbers, and we report the percentage of patients who don't improve with the same prominence as the percentage who do. Read exactly how we measure on our methodology page.