The Oregon Hearing Aid Specialist license, issued by the Oregon Health Authority’s Health Licensing Office (HLO) with the Advisory Council on Hearing Aids, under Oregon Revised Statutes Chapter 694, authorizes the holder to deal in hearing aids in Oregon. Three examinations stand behind it, and all three must be passed: the International Hearing Society written examination, the state-prepared Oregon laws and rules exam, and the state-prepared practical exam — reached through a registered traineeship and a 520-hour training program, and completed, for most candidates, while holding a temporary license. The PassProfessor Oregon Hearing Aid Specialist program, described on the companion program page at /oregon-hearing-instrument-specialist-exam-prep/, prepares candidates for that examination set.
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The credential at a glance
| Item | Verified position |
|---|---|
| Program | Oregon Hearing Aid Specialist, the Health Licensing Office license for dealing in hearing aids in Oregon |
| Licensing authority | Oregon Health Authority, Health Licensing Office (HLO), with the Advisory Council on Hearing Aids; Oregon Revised Statutes Chapter 694 and Oregon Administrative Rules Chapter 331, Divisions 630–680 |
| Examination | Three examinations, all required: (1) the International Hearing Society (IHS) Written International Licensing Examination (ILE) — 80 scored and 25 non-scored pilot multiple-choice questions, two hours; (2) the state-prepared written Oregon laws and rules exam — 20 multiple-choice questions, 30 minutes; (3) the state-prepared practical exam, in four sections covering audiometric posting, testing and masking, earmold impressions, hearing aid fitting and selection, and hearing aid verification |
| Passing standard | Oregon laws and rules exam: a score of 70 percent or higher, as published by the Health Licensing Office. No percentage pass mark for the ILE or the practical exam is published on the Office sources verified for this guide, and none is printed |
| Examination fees | Fees established by the Office in rule: Oregon laws and rules exam $50, written exam $150, practical exam $175 |
| Training | Hearing Aid Specialist Training (HAST) program: 520 hours of practical training under the direct supervision of a Registered Trainee Supervisor, plus completion of the IHS Distance Learning Program for Professionals in Hearing Health Sciences |
| Route | Trainee Registration → HAST training → Temporary License → the three examinations → Hearing Aid Specialist license (one-year term) |
| Administrator note | PassProfessor is independent and is not affiliated with the Oregon Health Authority, the Health Licensing Office, the Advisory Council on Hearing Aids, or the International Hearing Society |
Oregon rewards candidates who read the credential as the Health Licensing Office built it: a supervised training system with an examination set in its second half. A registration opens the training; the training unlocks the temporary license; the temporary license carries the candidate through the sittings; and three unlike examinations — a national knowledge paper, a short Oregon law paper, and a timed practical — convert the trainee into a licensee. The guide below takes each verified element in turn.
Reading the verified facts
Every fact in the table above was pinned to Health Licensing Office primary material — the Office’s license information page for this credential and the Chapter 331 rules, Divisions 630–680 — during this program’s research pass. Three reading rules apply. First, the 70 percent standard belongs to one examination only: the Oregon laws and rules exam, where the Office publishes it in that form; no percentage pass mark for the ILE or the practical exam was published on the sources verified, and none is invented here. Second, the three documents of the route — Trainee Registration, Temporary License, and license — are never merged: each authorizes a different scope of practice, and terms belonging to one are stated only for that one. Third, the training figures are stated as the rules allocate them: 520 hours is a distribution across named categories inside a six-to-twelve-month window, not a single block of workplace time.
The route, step by step
Step one — register as a trainee, before any training occurs. Apply to the Health Licensing Office meeting the general application requirements of OAR 331 Division 30, with proof of age, identification, and secondary education, and submit the Trainee Registration Agreement and Declaration of Responsibility required by ORS 694.065(2). The supervisor who signs it must be qualified in the rules’ own terms: an audiologist licensed under ORS Chapter 681 and practicing for at least four years, or a holder of an active hearing aid specialist license actively practicing for at least four years, with no unresolved disciplinary actions, who must retain all training forms for two years and may directly supervise no more than four trainees. The registration is valid for one year, cannot be renewed, and becomes invalid after the training program is completed — and no training counts until the Office has received the Declaration of Responsibility for that trainee.
Step two — complete the Hearing Aid Specialist Training program. The HAST program must be completed in no less than six months and no more than one year. Its 520 hours of practical training, under the trainee supervisor’s direct supervision — direct supervision meaning the supervisor is in view of the procedures performed — are allocated: 60 hours in audiometric testing; 60 in counseling regarding hearing examination; 60 in hearing aid selection; 60 in earmold impressions; 180 in hearing aid fitting and follow-up care; 60 in business practices, including ethics and regulations and sanitation and infection control; and 40 elective hours in any of the clinical categories. Alongside the hours, the trainee completes the IHS Distance Learning Program for Professionals in Hearing Health Sciences. If the supervisory relationship ends, both supervisor and trainee must notify the Office within five calendar days, the supervisor provides a Certification of Training form showing the hours completed, and a change of supervisor requires a new Declaration of Responsibility received before work resumes.
Step three — obtain the Temporary License. With a completed Certification of Training form — proof of the 520 hours, or an Office-evaluated equivalent, and of the IHS Distance Learning Program — the candidate applies for a temporary license. It authorizes work under the indirect supervision of a qualified supervisor — a licensed hearing aid specialist actively practicing for at least three years, or a qualifying audiologist — who must approve the temporary licensee’s work before ordering a recommended hearing aid, and whose name, license number, and date of review appear beside the temporary licensee’s signature on service documentation. The temporary license is valid for one year, may be renewed once if the renewal notice reaches the Office before the license becomes inactive, and becomes invalid upon passage of the three examinations.
Step four — sit the three examinations, each through its own door, detailed in the outline below: the ILE on Office authorization through IHS; the laws and rules exam at the Office, inside its published testing hours; and the practical by appointment, on an application received 30 days ahead. Step five — apply for the license. The full application requires the Division 30 application form and fees, a high school diploma or GED certificate, proof of being at least 18 years of age, and documentation of a licensure pathway. On the standard training-and-experience pathway, that is the completed HLO Certificate of Training form and proof of having passed all the examinations within two years of the application date. The rules also carry pathways built on substantially equivalent out-of-Oregon training, on audiologist or American Board of Otolaryngology training, and on NBC-HIS or ASHA certification — every one of which still requires proof of passing the three examinations, with the Oregon laws and rules exam passed within two years of the application date. The examinations are the common core of every Oregon route.
The outline in full
Oregon’s examination set has no single blueprint document; it has three instruments, each with its own source of truth — IHS for the written examination, the Office’s laws and rules bulletin and the Chapter 331 rules for the law paper, and the Office itself for the practical. They are stated here in full, because in Oregon the three interlock: the training teaches what the practical performs, the written paper tests what the training taught in principle, and the laws and rules exam governs how all of it may lawfully be practised in this state.
The written examination: the International Licensing Examination
The ILE is the occupation’s general professional paper, offered by the International Hearing Society. Its form is exact: 80 scored and 25 non-scored pilot multiple-choice questions — the pilot items are practice-scenario-based questions on which IHS collects data for future forms — in two hours, at authorized testing centers located throughout Oregon. The examination is separated into ten competency areas based on the knowledge, skills, and abilities required for safe and effective practice, listed with recommended reference materials in the IHS study guide. Two mechanics matter as much as the syllabus. First, the gate: applicants must obtain authorization from the Health Licensing Office to proceed with registration through IHS — there is no direct-to-IHS route for an Oregon candidate. Second, the reporting line: official documentation of results must be sent directly by IHS to the Office, and candidates are notified by the Office of a pass or fail based on their overall examination performance. A candidate therefore prepares for a pass/fail judgement on the whole paper — not for a published percentage, because Oregon publishes none for this examination.
The laws and rules exam: Oregon’s own paper
The state-prepared written Oregon laws and rules exam is the shortest instrument in the set and the only one with a published numeric standard: 20 multiple-choice questions, a 30-minute time limit, and a passing score of 70 percent or higher. Its territory is the regulations for Hearing Aid Specialists in the Advisory Council on Hearing Aids’ Oregon Administrative Rules — the Office notes that the material it publishes for examination preparation is not inclusive of all the regulations governing specialists in Oregon, and it publishes a Hearing Aid Oregon Laws and Rules Examination Information Bulletin for the sitting. Testing hours at the Office are Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. The arithmetic deserves respect: at twenty questions, each item is worth five percent, the 70 percent line sits at fourteen correct answers, and there is no section structure across which a weak topic can be averaged away. The retake discipline underlines that Oregon expects mastery rather than eventual luck: after the first, second, and third failed attempts the applicant may not retake until the Office’s next business day; after the fourth, fifth, and sixth, the wait is seven calendar days; after the seventh, the ability to retake, its requirements, or both, are determined by the Office or the Council on a case-by-case basis.
The practical exam, part one: audiometric posting, testing, and masking
The state-prepared practical examination is used to determine the qualification, fitness, and ability of an applicant to practice as a hearing aid specialist. Its largest section, P1, examines the audiometric craft in three timed segments: P1A, Audiogram Posting, 15 minutes; P1B, Audiometric Testing, 50 minutes; and P1C, Masking, 40 minutes — 105 of the practical’s 160 timed minutes sit inside this one section, which is the Office’s own statement of where the occupation’s examined risk lives. Posting is the discipline of the record; testing is measurement performed to standard; masking, given its own 40-minute segment rather than folded into testing, is examined as a judgement in its own right — the decision about when the non-test ear is participating is the point at which a threshold becomes trustworthy or becomes a guess. Before an individual can even apply for the practical, they must have completed the training program, or meet the alternative routes in ORS 694.065(1)(b) or (1)(c) that the rule names; candidates may be electronically monitored during testing, and only items and materials required by the Office are allowed in the examination area.
The practical exam, parts two to four: impressions, fitting and selection, verification
P2, Earmold Impressions, 20 minutes, examines the impression craft on which every custom fitting depends. P3, Hearing Aid Fitting and Selection, 20 minutes, examines the match between measured hearing and chosen instrument, carried out as a procedure rather than described as one. P4, Hearing Aid Verification, 15 minutes, closes the examination where good practice closes a fitting — with proof that the delivered instrument does what the selection intended. The practical is given by appointment only, the application and all requirements must be received at the Office 30 days before the scheduled date, and examinations are held at the Health Licensing Office in Salem on the Office’s published schedule. Its retake terms are the sternest in the Oregon set: all retakes are subject to examination fees and the Office’s approved schedule; an applicant who has not passed after four attempts must request the Council’s permission to sit again; and an applicant who does not pass on the fifth attempt may be required to take additional training. The practical is not designed to be sat repeatedly until it yields — it is designed to be prepared for.
How Oregon publishes standards — and what is not published
Oregon publishes exactly one numeric pass mark across a three-examination set, and candidates routinely misread that asymmetry. The laws and rules exam’s standard is published in full: 70 percent or higher on a 20-question, 30-minute paper. For the ILE, the Office publishes the reporting mechanism instead of a number — results sent directly by IHS to the Office, and pass/fail notification based on overall examination performance. For the practical, it publishes the sections, time allowances, prerequisites, and retake consequences, but no percentage. The honest targets follow: for the law paper, mastery of the Chapter 331 rules; for the ILE, coverage of the ten competency areas at licensing depth; for the practical, timed performance inside each allowance. Any percentage quoted by third-party material for the Oregon ILE or practical does not come from the Office and should be treated as unverified.
The sittings themselves
Each Oregon component is sat differently. The ILE is sat at an authorized testing center, on Office authorization, registered through IHS, in a single two-hour sitting — with the discipline that pilot items cannot be identified, so every question is answered as if it counted, because 80 of them do. The laws and rules exam is sat at the Office inside its Monday-to-Friday, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. testing hours: a half-hour paper with no wasted motion in it. The practical is sat by appointment at the Health Licensing Office in Salem, on a published schedule of dates across the year, with the application and all requirements in the Office’s hands 30 days before the chosen date — the one Oregon component whose deadline precedes the sitting by a month, and therefore the one that punishes late planning rather than weak knowledge. Across all three, examination-room discipline has teeth: candidates may be electronically monitored, only Office-required items are allowed in the examination area, and a candidate may be disqualified at any point, with the examination invalidated and fees forfeited, for giving, receiving, or soliciting aid, or for removing examination material.
A study plan built on how this examination is actually put together
Build the plan in the order the evidence weights the risk. First, the performed audiometric craft — the practical section that holds two-thirds of the practical’s timed minutes: full testing runs against the segment clocks, masking decisions made and defended aloud, audiograms posted exactly as the record requires, until the procedure survives nerves and a timer at once. Second, the remaining practical sections as timed chains — impression, fitting and selection, and verification rehearsed inside their 20, 20, and 15 minutes, because a section failed on time is failed outright. Third, the written syllabus — the ILE’s ten competency areas, studied against the training the candidate has just completed, so every principle is tied to a performed memory. Fourth, Oregon law as a separate, short, intense subject — the Chapter 331 rules read as the laws and rules exam’s named territory and finished well before the sitting, because a 20-question paper at a 70 percent line rewards complete coverage and punishes sampling. Fifth, the administrative rehearsal — Office authorization obtained, practical application filed 30 days out, temporary license currency checked: the details that void sittings without testing knowledge at all.
The working method: turning the outline into a performance
Oregon preparation fails most often as a modality problem: candidates study a set that is two-thirds performance and law as if it were a reading examination. The working method that answers it has four parts. Perform weekly, timed, from the training onward. Audiometric runs, masking drills, impressions, and verifications done as the practical will do them — in segments, against their published allowances — with every deviation named and corrected on the spot. An error log keyed to the three examinations. Every missed written item, misjudged masking decision, skipped impression step, and misremembered rule filed under its examination — ILE, laws and rules, practical — so that after a month the log, not the candidate’s confidence, assigns the remaining study. Law learned as the rules are written. The Chapter 331 divisions read in sequence and applied to situations — a supervision question, a calibration lapse, a documentation gap — because the laws and rules exam tests the regulations as a working system, and the same system governs the licensee’s practice afterward. Administrative dry runs. Before each sitting, walk its checklist cold: authorization received, deadlines calendared backward from the sitting date, identification meeting the Division 30 requirements, license and registration currency confirmed.
The errors this examination is built to catch
The Oregon set catches a recognisable set. Preparing for one examination and calling it the set — ILE material alone leaves Oregon law and the practical untouched, and Oregon requires all three. Treating the laws and rules exam as a formality meets a 20-question paper where six wrong answers fail, and a retake schedule that lengthens with every attempt. Studying the practical as theory meets an examination that watches the candidate’s hands for 160 minutes. Letting the training year drift — hours unbalanced across the allocated categories, the distance learning left to the final month — collides with a Trainee Registration that lasts one year and cannot be renewed. Missing the practical’s 30-day application deadline converts a prepared candidate into a later sitting date. And ignoring the retake ceilings — Council permission after four practical attempts, possible additional training after the fifth — treats as elastic a system Oregon has deliberately made firm.
The credential in one view
The Oregon Hearing Aid Specialist license in one view is a chain of supervised trust with an examination set at its hinge. A registered trainee learns the craft in view of a supervisor, across 520 allocated hours and a national distance-learning curriculum; a temporary license then lets the trained candidate practise under a senior’s indirect supervision — work approved before an aid is ordered — while the state tests the learning three ways: what the candidate knows, whether the candidate knows Oregon’s law, and what the candidate can do, in timed segments, with their hands. Only then does Oregon hand over the independent credential. The candidate who studies the three examinations as one event at three registers — principle, law, and performance — finds them reinforcing each other: audiometric theory explains masking practice, impression practice explains fitting outcomes, and the laws and rules material explains why the whole sequence is supervised in the first place.
After the sittings: the license and its clocks
Passing the three examinations ends the temporary license — it becomes invalid upon passage — and opens the full application: the license itself is issued for one year, becoming inactive on the last day of the month one year from issuance. Renewal is an annual discipline: renewal application and fee submitted before inactive status to avoid late fees, and documentation of at least 12 hours of continuing education obtained in the year, through an accredited college or university, an IHS-approved course or program, or an Office pre-approved program, in subject matter related to dealing in hearing aids. Excess hours do not carry forward; a two-hour safety and infection control course is required once every two years; documentation must be kept for two years after renewal and produced on audit. A license may remain inactive for up to three years, with continuing education obtained for each inactive year; past three years it is expired, and the applicant reapplies under the current requirements. No practice is permitted on an inactive or expired license. In daily practice the rules continue the examinations’ themes: service areas kept clean and disinfected, audiometric equipment calibrated annually with documentation on file and a biologic check performed daily before use, and the full test battery — pure tone air and bone conduction, speech reception threshold, word recognition, and most comfortable and uncomfortable listening levels — verified and documented before a fitting, unless the same tests were completed within the preceding 90 days.
Frequently asked questions
Which Office sources govern the Oregon route?
The Health Licensing Office’s license information page for the Advisory Council on Hearing Aids, and Oregon Administrative Rules Chapter 331, Divisions 630–680, which carry the training program, the registration and license stages, the examination rules, the fees, and the continuing education requirements.
Why does the training come before the examinations in Oregon?
Because the Office makes it the eligibility structure: the practical examination cannot be applied for until the training program is complete (or a rule-named alternative route is met), and the Temporary License that carries most candidates through their sittings requires the completed 520 hours and the IHS Distance Learning Program, evidenced by the Certification of Training.
What do the 520 training hours actually contain?
An allocation, not a block: 60 hours each in audiometric testing, counseling regarding hearing examination, hearing aid selection, and earmold impressions; 180 hours in hearing aid fitting and follow-up care; 60 hours in business practices, including ethics and regulations and sanitation and infection control; and 40 elective hours in the clinical categories — all under a Registered Trainee Supervisor’s direct supervision, inside a window of no less than six months and no more than one year.
Is there a published Oregon passing score I should aim at?
For one examination only: the laws and rules exam, at 70 percent or higher. No percentage pass mark for the ILE or the practical exam was published on the Office sources verified for this guide, and none is printed here; any percentage quoted by third-party material for those two examinations should be treated as unverified.
How does the laws and rules retake schedule work in practice?
The waits lengthen with repeated failure: the Office’s next business day after each of the first three failed attempts; seven calendar days after the fourth, fifth, and sixth; and a case-by-case determination by the Office or the Council after the seventh. The practical carries the harder ceiling — Council permission is required after four unsuccessful attempts, and additional training may be required after a fifth failure.
Who authorizes what — the Office or IHS?
The Office authorizes: an Oregon candidate must obtain HLO authorization before registering through IHS for the ILE, and IHS sends official results directly to the Office, which notifies the candidate of the outcome. The laws and rules exam and the practical are the Office’s own examinations, sat at or through the Office.
Does the examination test diagnosis or treatment of ear disease?
No. The Oregon credential is a license to deal in hearing aids — testing hearing for fitting purposes, taking impressions, selecting, fitting, and verifying instruments — under the standards of practice in the Chapter 331 rules. It is not a diagnostic or medical credential, and the examinations are built to the fitting and dispensing scope.
Can training or a credential from outside Oregon substitute for the HAST program?
The rules carry alternative pathways — substantially equivalent out-of-Oregon training and experience, audiologist training, American Board of Otolaryngology training, NBC-HIS certification, and ASHA certification — but every pathway requires proof of passing the same three Oregon examinations, with the Oregon laws and rules exam passed within two years of the application date. No pathway waives the Oregon law paper.
Is PassProfessor affiliated with the Health Licensing Office, the Advisory Council, or IHS?
No. PassProfessor is an independent preparation provider. The Office alone licenses; IHS offers the written examination and the Distance Learning Program under its own arrangements.
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