From the infectious diseases meeting: What’s with the vaccine-o-phobia?

PHILADELPHIA – For the folks who promote vaccination, these are trying times. Recently, CNN hosted a segment titled: “Virus or Vaccine: Which is Worse?”

It’s enough to set Paul Offit to ranting, which he did this week at a meeting of the Infectious Diseases Society of America. Offit, a physician who heads the infectious disease division at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, has devoted a career to fighting illness. In his job, vaccines are often the most reliable weapon available, and cost-effective to boot. And although it’s astonishingly more dangerous to contract a disease than it is to get vaccinated for it, that message seems to have gotten lost somewhere along the way.

Offit traces this detour back to 1982, when DPT — the shot that prevents diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis – was (wrongly) linked to brain damage. “Three people believed their kids were harmed by the vaccine,” he says.

Offit has compassion for families who have a child who has suffered, whatever the cause may be, known or unknown. But since 1982, it’s been one accusation after another against vaccines. People tried to link the HIB vaccine to diabetes (no evidence), the hepatitis B vaccine to multiple sclerosis (all but one study found no link), and other vaccines to SIDS or autism. Recently, the HPV vaccine — which prevents cervical cancer – got linked to heart attacks and strokes (no proof).

And now the seasonal flu vaccine and H1N1 flu vaccine are being skipped by millions of people who somehow distrust the science that went into making them, even though the illnesses they cause can be fatal. Read more »

Medical Alert Companies Comparison – Medical Alert Monitoring Systems

When you compare medical alert companies, you are not comparing companies medical alert device companies but service provider companies. This makes comparison process little tricky. Let me use industry knowledge and experience to act as shopper and market researcher.

Think you are going out to stay at a hotel that you’ve never been to before. We will use this analogy to compare medical alert companies. The hotel may appear clean, have nice surrounding, and great amenities, but the wait staff may not be providing good service you are expecting you may have been better off asking a friend what their experience was like, read reviews by others online, or a review by a local travel critic. That’s where we come in.

Assume the hotel is type of the medical alert monitoring device that you will use. Does it have all of the physical features, functions, or the look and feel that you want?

What kinds of Medical Alert Companies are there?

• Full Service These medical alert companies provide the entire operation from sales, to equipment service, to central station monitoring, all themselves. They do not source-out the operations to any third parties.

• Reseller/Marketing Only These medical alert companies take care of the marketing only of the product and service. In today’s digital age, they typically have a website and place ads in magazines, on television, or through retail displays in their storefronts.

• Partial Service These medical alert companies typically take care of the sales and service, but hire out the central station monitoring to a third party. This is due to the very high costs of opening and maintaining a central monitoring station; especially if it is certified or listed by one or more agencies like Underwriters Laboratories (UL).

• The hostess is like the sales person you’ll be speaking with. Are they able to give you an accurate estimate of how long your wait time may be for a table? If they tell you they can accommodate your group size, or maybe a request for special accommodations for a handicapper or a child playing areas?

• The hotel staff is like the customer service representatives and central dispatch operators. These are the people that you or your loved one will spend the most of your time communicating with and get the most satisfaction from. Are they attentive, knowledgeable, friendly, and patient? Are they maintaining the highest standards available and required to have continual training to be sure they are?

Who are then actual Medical Alert Monitoring Companies?

That can sometimes be very difficult finding out who is really who. The full service companies can be easy as they will usually come right out and tell you! The partial service companies will usually tell you who will monitor your loved one typically after you come right out and ask. Very few are up front about it, but some are.

It is not easy to get correct information from some reseller companies. We try to uncover who these companies are, and let you know who is providing the monitoring services for them, so you can read about the actual medical alert company servicing your loved one.

Why You Should Care about Medical Alert Companies?

The full service medical alert companies have a much larger capital and human investment than the partial and marketing only companies. That gives them a vested interest in the quality and care provided to their customers from end-to-end.

The partial service companies have a much greater investment than the reseller/marketing only companies because they take care of the sales, customer service, equipment service, shipping, etc. themselves. They don’t handle the monitoring, but they do more than just market the service.

It is very important to find-out what type of medical alert company you are dealing with. The more services that are under one roof could mean higher customer satisfaction and better quality control.

If you can get a quality, full service, and highly rated company in the same price range as a marketing only or partial company, would you pick the full service company?