2015 Health Care Champions Audiology Specialist: Brian Vesely

Brian Vesely has treated every kind of person from every walk of life. Hearing loss doesn’t discriminate.

“When an individual suffers from hearing loss, he or she begins to withdraw,” says Vesely, a doctor of audiology, founding partner and CEO of Sound Advice Hearing Doctors LLC. “These individuals are active human beings that contribute to their families, communities, churches and marriages. When these individuals withdraw, they lose a sense of worth, meaning and value. On top of it, they are greatly missed by those they are withdrawing from.”

With clinics in Missouri and Arkansas, Vesely says every day he visits with people who are fighting this battle and every day, his professional motivation is rejuvenated by those stories and the results.

The Cleveland native earned his undergraduate degree at Arkansas’s Harding University before relocating to the Ozarks to attend Missouri State University for his doctorate.

“The hearing health care landscape has changed drastically over the past 10 years. I’m the only doctor of audiology in Springfield that owns their practice,” Vesely says. “Technology changes frequently. It is essential that audiologists change with the waves of technology to provide the best possible care for their patients.”

Vesely believes his patients benefit from an audiologist-owned clinic – versus one owned by a hearing-aid manufacturer – because the doctor is able to choose the best device unencumbered by a requirement to use certain products. Vesely sees about 20 patients a day and works with everything from cochlear implants to hearing aids and extended-wear devices.

“Audiologists are in the trenches all day every day working closely with our patients,” he says. “I strongly believe that the best patient care is centered around the provider deciding what’s best for his or her patients. I take my role very seriously and hope to pioneer and grow a patient-centered care model that will become the standard in Springfield.”

To that end, Vesely is a founding partner of Alpaca Audiology, a group purchasing organization designed to bring down the cost of hearing aids.

“We’ve had great results in our mission of making health care affordable to as many as possible,” he says. “I’ve brought together large and small clinics alike to make their purchasing decisions together. In doing so, we’ve created a collective purchasing model that drives the cost of the product down to make it more affordable for the patient. In the past four years, we’ve added clinics from across the United States to join our Ozarks-headquartered group. There is nothing else like this in the U.S.”

In 2009, Vesely received the President’s Distinguished Service Medal from the American Academy of Audiology for significant contributions to the profession – the youngest person to date to be so honored and the second from Missouri. And in 2012, Gov. Jay Nixon appointed Vesely to the Missouri Board of Examiners for Hearing Instrument Specialists, for which he serves as vice chairman.