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TOP TEN SAFETY APPS – Guest Blog

Guest Blog – Jesse Harwell is today’s guest author.  We know you will enjoy reading about ways to stay safe, and can benefit from this safety advise.  With these types of safety apps, how much “smarter” can our cell phones get?

Top 10 Safety Apps

There are a number of smartphone apps on the market designed to keep you and your family safe in emergency situations. They cover everything from safe driving and emergency alerts to first aid instructions. Here are the top ten safety apps.

1. Life 360 – Android (Free)

This app is the perfect tool for families in an emergency situation. It has a number of features vital in any disaster situation, such as GPS tracking on family members’ phones, disaster planning tips, communication tools, neighborhood maps of safety points.

2. MyMotolingo – Windows phones ($5/month)

This app is good for parents of teen drivers or spouses of drivers with road rage. It monitors all driver distractions, such as text messages and phone calls, and provides a report of phone activity. It also logs aggressive acceleration, speeding, trip length, and time that can be provided in email reports or tweets. Make sure your loved ones are keeping themselves safe on the road.

3. Playsafe iPhone ($0.99)

Another factor that distracts drivers is playing and changing music on a mobile device. It makes the iPhone screen into a large button to play and pause music. A simple sideways swipe on the screen changes the track.

4. Silent Bodyguard iPhone ($3.99)

This app acts like a silent panic button. Press it and the system will send e-mails, texts and social media messages with your location every 60 seconds to everyone on your emergency contact list. Best of all, it’s silent in case you’re in a situation when you wouldn’t want your attacker to know you’ve called for help.

5. Safety NET – Android ($3.99)

If you have loved ones who have medical issues, you might want to have them install this app. It uses a smartphone’s built-in accelerometer to monitor for falls, collisions, or shakes and immediately alerts all the contacts listed in the user’s “Safety Net.” If you accidentally drop your phone or don’t need help, you are also given 15 seconds to cancel the alert.

6. Pocket First Aid & CPR – iPhone, Android ($1.99) 

This app comes from the American Heart Association and provides basic instructions for performing first aid and CPR for adults, children, and infants. This should not be a substitute for complete first aid and CPR training, but it could save a life in an emergency. It also has several videos and illustrations to help you perform first aid and CPR correctly.

7. Emergency Radio – iPhone ($1.99) 

If you’re in an emergency situation without access to power, this app allows you to listen in on radio frequencies from first responders, such as the police, fire department, coast guard, as well as weather stations and air traffic control frequencies. It is currently available for major cities in the U.S., as well as a few around the world like London, Toronto, and Sydney.

8. ICE – iPhone ($0.99)

ICE stands for In Case of Emergency. This app allows first responders and emergency personnel to find your emergency contacts, medical information, and allergies all in one place.

9. Help Me!Android (Free)

This app provides personal information such as blood type, medical conditions, allergies, and an emergency call button. When the app is open, the screensaver is disabled so that anyone helping you can see the information at all times.

10. Personal SafetyAndroid ($1.99)

This app provides lots of information to keep you and your family safe. It alerts you of high-crime neighborhoods, severe weather, allergens, air quality, and speed limits wherever you are.

Jesse Harwell is a former private investigator who now owns and manages the site  Master of Homeland Security. It is a resource for students looking to earn a Master’s Degree in Homeland Security.

Wow!  What great information, thank you so much, Jesse!  This is good advice to assist everyone, as we never know when an emergency will happen.  Please pass this on to your family and friends.  Go to Jesse’s website for more ways to stay safe!

 

HOW MUCH IS TOO MUCH WHEN IT COMES TO ABUSING PRESCRIPTION DRUGS?

This is a sad story of a tiny snowball that starts rolling down a mountain, growing larger by the minute.  It’s a story of the abuse of human beings who are given too many pain killers, powerful antipsychotic and anti-anxiety drugs.  Tragically, many of the patients are children, some under three years of age.  Many of these little ones have been through physical or mental stress in their short lives.  Prescribing drugs to toddlers is considered “off-label” – uses not approved by the federal Food and Drug Administration.  By the time the snowball reaches the bottom of the mountain, taxpayers, Medicare and Medicaid are the victims of  fraudulent prescription costs.   

According to a recent report by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, $47 million worth of Medicaid prescriptions have been written over the past two years in Texas, by a  handful of physicians.  The top five doctors alone wrote $18 million worth.  In their report, based on sources such as the Texas Department of Health and Human Services, Texas Medical Board, U.S. Senate Finance Committee, and Medicaid vendor drug claim files, the following information represents these two sets of data.  These sets listed the top 10 Medicaid prescribers of antipsychotic drugs, such as Zyprexa, Abilify and Seroquel.  We won’t name names, but the #1 physician wrote 44,138 prescriptions that were filled at a cost of $6,370,005.  The next four doctors had written prescriptions costing from $4,643,626 to $1,996,043.  The top prescribers of drugs known as psychotropics, (referring to different types of mental-health drugs, possibly including antipsychotics,) given from 2005 or 2006 to 2009 totaled more than 120,747 by five physicians.  Many physicians have physician assistants that can write prescriptions under their name, and some clinics are probably included in these figures.  

If this is going on in Texas, how about all the other states, and who is paying the bill?  One news article stated that in Ohio, a physician wrote 102,000 prescriptions in two years.  Another doctor in Miami wrote almost 97,000 in 18 months for mental health patients.  Thirty-four states have a State Prescription Drug Monitoring Program.  There are statewide databases that collect designated data on dispensed substances and this information is housed by a specific statewide regulatory, administrative or law enforcement agency.  Data is distributed to individuals who have the authority under state law to receive the information for the purpose of determining if it is legitimate medical use of controlled drugs or identify and deter previous drug abuse.  The Drug Enforcement Agency is not involved in these state programs. 

Kaiser Health News and the Star-Telegram both have reported that Republican Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa is pressuring Health and Human Services officials to investigate why some physicians write massive amounts of scripts for tax-funded Medicare and Medicaid programs.  Prescription drug fraud in the U.S. costs an estimated $60 billion to $90 billion a year to these programs.  As it stands now, physicians in question may be sent before a medical review board or for education, which amounts to a slap on the wrist.   Our state has automated ways to check these records and catch overuse, incorrect dosage and misuse.  Each state should have some type of similar system.  But how do we stop them?  And what about the safety of patients who are given these huge doses of medications? 

For those who truly need help with mental or physical needs, we are grateful for medications.  Many times persons can be helped with therapy as well, and/or medicine.  Years ago, these powerful drugs did not exist, and we wonder how people overcame or coped with their problems.  Hopefully, they had the help and support of caring families and friends.   

Most of our doctors really care about us and want us to stay healthy.  Many are cautious about even over-prescribing antibiotics, because these meds eventually won’t help if given too often.  We appreciate physicians for their diligence, seeing us in the middle of the night in an emergency room, and upholding the oath they took when they became doctors. 

Hopefully, the Federal Health and Human Services officials will take action to remedy this fraudulent behavior.  They owe it to the taxpayers to do what is right and figure out a way to penalize those physicians who are abusing the system (and their patients).  A part of operating local hospitals or clinics require physicians or an oversight committee  to review patient’s records and determine if the care of each patient was appropriate.  This should be done on a regular basis.  It takes time, but is worth it to save someone’s life.  There must be a way to stop prescription fraud.   

Look at a map of the United States, and picture it covered with all those snowballs!