To understand how new the field of audiology is relative to other medical specialties, consider that audiologist Mary Chatelain, founder of Pinnacle Hearing, earned her degree from Louisiana Tech University in 2007 as a member of that school’s very first doctoral class.
Six years later, she opened her practice’s first location in Little Rock and has spent the time since changing both public stereotypes and patients’ minds about hearing loss.
“There’s such a stigma. It takes the average patient seven years between when they have hearing loss and when they actually say, ‘I have a problem,’ and move forward with an assistive device,” she said. “Being able to change people’s mindset just really motivates me, to take that fear and that hesitation and really make it something people can get excited about.”
A native of Magnolia, Chatelain was inspired to one day open her own business by watching her father, who had his own roofing company. However, even up to the time she was a student at her hometown Southern Arkansas University she did not know what that would look like.
“I really wasn’t sure what I wanted to do, so I kind of just got my basics out of the way while I learned about different careers,” she said. “Someone suggested speech pathology to me, and when I started researching that, I came across audiology, both of which required the same bachelor’s degree before you go on to graduate school.
“What really intrigued me was it was a fairly new profession, really originating after World War II, when we had so many people coming back with noise-induced hearing loss. I was really intrigued by it. I saw a lot of growth potential, and I thought it was really neat that helping people hear wasn’t life or death; it dealt in quality of life.”
Chatelain made a couple of stops before opening her own practice. She started out working for a practice in Florida to learn how a hearing clinic was supposed to run and then came back to Arkansas in 2009 to work for a large company that showed her some of what she did not want her company to be.
“When I moved back here, I worked for [a company] for about five years where it wasn’t about the community, it wasn’t about giving. Patients just became a number,” she said. “I was like, ‘No, I’m going to do this on my own and do it the right way.’”
Chatelain’s compassionate, patient-first approach was a hit right out of the gate, quickly leading to an invitation by a hospital in Camden to provide audiology services there on a once-a-month basis. Monthly became weekly, and soon, business was brisk enough to open a second clinic there in 2024. At both locations, patients are introduced to cutting-edge hearing aids, as well as new innovations in diagnostics and treatment for hearing conditions, including tinnitus.
She said she is happy operating two physical locations at the moment but can envision future expansion thanks to technology.
“In 2020, we were able to pivot to doing some telehealth and teleaudiology that allowed us to provide more services,” she said. “We were able to do hearing aid adjusting remotely where the patient came into the office and a tech got them connected and got the doctor on the screen. That really changed what we were able to offer communities that are difficult to get doctors to move to in service to patients.
“Now the telehealth portion has opened up a lot of new avenues for us. It’s really exciting because a lot of the time, you have patients that if they have to drive for their healthcare, they’re just not going to get it. I think that if we found a community or a situation where we could fill a need, I think we definitely would be open to that.”
Photo by Jane Colclasure
READ THE FULL LIST OF AMP 2026 CHAMPIONS OF HEALTHCARE LIST HERE
