Background Post-lingual deafness represents a critical challenge for adults’ well-being with substantial public health burdens. One treatment of choice has been cochlear implants (CI) for people with severe to profound hearing loss (HL). Since 2018, Chile has implemented a high-cost policy to cover CI treatment, the “Ley Ricarte Soto” (LRS) health policy. However, wide variability exists in the use of this device. To date, no study has been published on policy evaluation in Chile or other Latin American countries.

Objectives This study aimed to evaluate the impact of the LRS policy on the treatment success and labour market inclusion among deaf or hard of hearing (DHH) adults using CI. We examined and characterised outcomes based on self-reports about treatment success and occupation status between 2018 and 2020.

Design We performed a prospective study using hospital clinical records and an online questionnaire with 76 DHH adults aged >15 who had received CIs since the introduction of the LRS policy in 2018. Using univariate and multivariate regression models, we investigated the relationship between demographic, audiological, and social determinants of health and outcomes, including treatment success for social inclusion (International Outcome inventory for Hearing Aids and CIs assessment: IOI-HA) for social inclusion and occupation status for labour market inclusion.

Results Our study showed elevated levels of treatment success in most of the seven sub-scores of the IOI-HA assessment. Similarly, around 70% of participants maintained or improved their occupations after receiving their CI. We found a significant positive association between treatment success and market inclusion. Participants diagnosed at younger ages had better results than older participants in both outcomes (P=0.078 and P= 0.011, respectively). Regarding social determinants of health, finding suggested participants with high social health insurance and a shorter commute time to the clinic (p=0.070 and p=0.086, respectively) had better results in treatment success. For labour market inclusion, participants with high education levels and better pre-CI occupation (p=0.069 and p=0.021, respectively) had better post-CI occupation status, and findings suggested an impact of high education levels.

Conclusions In evaluating the LRS policy for providing CIs for DHH adults in Chile, we found positive effects relating to treatment success and occupation status. Our study supports the importance of age at diagnosis and social determinants of health, which should be assessed by integrating public services and bringing them near each beneficiary. Although evidence-based guidelines for candidate selection given by the LRS policy might contribute to good results, these parameters could limit the policy access to people who do not meet the requirements of the guidelines due to social inequalities.

The authors have declared no competing interest.

Acknowledgements: All authors attest they meet the ICMJE criteria for authorship and have reviewed and approved the final article. This article was supported by a full scholarship provided by the Chilean Government "Beca de Doctorado en el Extranjero Becas Chile, Convocatoria 2018, Ley N 21.053, Asociacion Nacional de Investigacion y Desarrollo (ANID)".

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Ethics: Two Research Ethics Committees approved the study: The Faculty of Medicine, University of Chile (167-2020) and University College London (UCL) (LCD-2020-13). The approval considered data protection, procedures for collecting data and informed consent.

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