Hear NM Mobile Hearing Services

Meet Dr. Allison Coltisor of Hear NM

For a lot of New Mexicans, getting the hearing care they need means a long drive, a waiting room, and a specialist who barely knows their name, if they can even make the trip at all. Dr. Allison Coltisor founded Hear NM to change that. Hear NM is a mobile audiology practice based in Los Alamos, and Allison brings her full range of services to the Albuquerque area twice a month. Her credentials are frankly a little staggering: she's one of only five adult cochlear implant specialists in the entire state, one of three or four audiologists who handles balance disorders at her level of expertise, and the only post-doctoral fellow in audiology practicing in New Mexico. For central auditory processing disorder, which affects both kids and adults, she's one of a small handful of providers statewide who even offers it.

Dr. Coltisor is originally from Texas, but her path through audiology took her through some of the most underserved corners of the country. She trained and worked at Vanderbilt, then spent time in the rural communities of Appalachia and East Tennessee, which gave her a clear-eyed understanding of what it actually looks like when people can't access specialized care.

Her husband's work at Los Alamos National Laboratory brought her to New Mexico, and what she found here felt familiar: a state full of people who needed specialized audiological care and very few providers equipped to deliver it. She eventually left a corporate practice and started Hear NM in order to be present for more patients who may not have access to the care they need. Dr. Coltisor is one of a handful of people who can assess balance disorders, and is also traumatic brain injury-specialized for audiology. She's also the only post-doctoral fellow in the state of New Mexico.

The Care the System Wasn't Providing

What sets Hear NM apart isn't just Dr. Coltisor's credentials, it's her philosophy. She operates on a sliding scale fee structure for patients who can't afford full-cost services, and she works directly with hearing aid manufacturers to secure significantly discounted devices for those who can document financial need. She also helps patients navigate insurance plans, connecting them with brokers or state representatives when a plan switch could unlock hearing aid benefits they didn't know they had.

She puts it simply: the patient should be the one deciding where they get their care.

Services at Hear NM include audiological evaluations, hearing aid evaluations, fittings, and servicing, cochlear implant programming, bone-anchored hearing aid programming, real ear programming, and balance disorder assessments. The practice accepts patients four years and older.

Hearing Care That Meets You Where You Are

Right now, Dr. Coltisor is running at full speed, working seven days a week to meet demand while building the infrastructure to expand her team. She already has a provider-in-training and another specialist lined up to join part-time by the end of the year.

Her long-term vision is even bigger: an integrated medicine clinic centrally located between Santa Fe and Los Alamos, designed to serve the communities that have historically had to travel the furthest for care.

Allison isn't stopping at patient care, either. She's been working directly with New Mexico legislators to push through bills she believes could fundamentally reshape how healthcare operates in the state, starting with a bill on intraoperative neurological monitoring, a practice that reduces the risk of surgical injuries by 48 percent. Her argument isn't just clinical: it's economic. "In order to truly achieve an improved healthcare system, we have to be more conscientious as healthcare providers but also implement economically feasible plans," she says.

Her broader thesis is that the reason healthcare costs so much, and delivers so little consistency, comes down to a gap that almost no one is addressing: nobody has actually conducted a proper risk analysis of the healthcare system, identified where the greatest vulnerabilities are, and built a real mitigation strategy around them. Allison sees that gap as both a problem and an opportunity, and she's positioning herself, and eventually her integrated medicine clinic, to fill it.

Better Hearing Care, right now

For Albuquerque residents, the most immediate thing to know is this: if you or someone you love has been waiting on answers about their hearing, balance, or auditory processing, there's now a specialist who comes to you. Twice a month, right here in the metro.

Visit https://hearnm.org to learn more or book an appointment. You can also reach Hear NM directly at 505-390-6995.