You Ask Me Why and I'll Say Why Not

In order to fulfill my requirements for The Smart Med Card, I need to spend a lot of time on Google, Facebook, Addictomatic (news stories) and talking to business owners, EMTs, First Responders, Firefighters - holy-wha! It's a lot of work, but, I get a lot of very diverse views and opinions from the vast number of people I need to interact with on a given day. Thus, thanks to my daily duties, I have compiled a little FAQ of my own for The Smart Med Card. Remember, you can learn a lot from other peoples intentions, mistakes and misconceptions!

The price - it seems a little out of reach for me at this time.
The truth is, no it isn't. I'm famous for being blunt and to the point, so here it is. The typical family of 4 will spend about $25 twice a week eating at fast-food restaurants. That comes out to around $2600 a year - on junk food[1]. If you cut out just one week of fast-food trips and instead provide a healthy home-made meal, you could easily pay for this card; something that may actually save your life. It's all about priorities.

I'm healthy and really not too concerned about any medical emergency treatment.
Here's a questions to you - are you allergic to Penicillin? It's fairly-common and it's not known unless you are introduced to it in the first place. Are you allergic to the tetanus shot, peanuts...etc; and if 'not', are you sure? You see, WHEN something may happen which requires medical-aid you better be ready for the barrage of treatments, pokes, prods and interactions you will be part of during said treatment. If you don't know your health well enough and those providing treatment can't get the information they really need - then your situation can accelerate from not to holy-panda in two-seconds flat! Also, what about conditions that you treat such as headaches, colds, depression...etc. These medications when mixed with provided treatment could result in an acute case of death.

I can just transfer my records to my new care provider. Why isn't that enough?
Aha - personal anecdote! I, the webmaster and Social Media Marketeer am about 3 months away from having my second daughter! The thing is, my location right now is not my 'hometown'. We are actually only 2 months into our relocation. Anyway, my wife had a doctor checkup a while back and in preparation we completed her medical records requisition form and sent it out - allowing plenty of time for her records to be transferred. Well surprise, life just doesn't play well with others. The doctors still didn't have my wife's information when we arrived and the head nurse was quite irritated as we couldn't answer the questions she needed; not even about phone-numbers and addresses of our medical campus back home. It was a bit depressing being admonished about not keeping track of our information. I really wish I had this card then, or at least had written some of that information down instead of assuming our records would just be where the needed to. So, even if you just use the The Smart Med Card for keeping track of your care-providers, a few addresses, phone-numbers, allergies and medications you could not only make it easy for any other doctor you visit to provide the best care, but paperwork becomes much easier to fill out accurately.

I hear about these bracelets and IDs that look like jewelery and are just as helpful to First Responders. Why is this wallet-card any better?
It is not my place to tell you what you need to do, but it is my place to give you the information to help you make the best choice. The jewelery you see will often alert First Responders of a condition you have and perhaps an emergency contact. That is generally an OK concept, but in terms of mitigating error in treatment, getting a hold of medical records if you are not brought to your hospital and are in critical condition or locating other emergency contacts if your initial contact is not reachable, then in reality this device does not have a viable success rate in actually saving your life. Did you know that if you are female and you have a medical ID necklace the most likely scenario will be that it won't be seen due to fear of personal invasion. These devices are also incapable of alerting what medications you are on and when you most-likely took your last dose - all very important information needed to provide adequate care.

So, there's a little but more information for you to process and perhaps shine a little more light onto why The Smart Med Card should be in your wallet.


Sources:
[1] M, Kevin, 'How Much Money Can You Save by Not Eating Out, February 28, 2010, Accessed August, 30 2011 http://outofyourrut.com/blog/2010/02/28/how-much-money-can-you-save-by-not-eating-out/