Speech and audiology board highlights business modernization; audiology assistant license draws support

Gilda Dominguez, chair of the Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology and Hearing Aid Dispensers Board, told the joint committee the board manages licensing for three distinct professions—speech-language pathology, audiology and hearing-aid dispensing—and has modernized initial licensure to an online system that reduced processing times by roughly 71%.

Dominguez and vice chair Amy White said the board added enforcement staffing that enabled ongoing continuing-education audits (the board has completed 249 audits and expects more by fiscal-year-end, with an average audit failure rate of about 28 percent). The board urged continued funding for enforcement and future business modernization of enforcement workflows.

Members questioned the impact of a proposed audiology assistant license. Amy White and California Academy of Audiology representatives said the assistant category would allow audiologists to handle higher patient volumes by delegating screening and technical tasks to trained assistants, increasing access where there are only about 2,500 audiologists statewide. The academy's survey data cited at the hearing suggested strong employer demand for assistants.

Professional associations told the committee they support retention of the board and the audiology assistant proposal, while a consumer-protection group recommended adding more public members and raising scrutiny of the board's investigative timelines and discipline performance.

The committee asked the board to continue engagement with stakeholders as it develops assistant training standards and modernization steps; no formal rule changes were adopted at the hearing.