Thanks to Health.com, I present you with How to call in sick without jeopardizing your job!

With today’s economy, high unemployment and layoffs around the country, few folks call in sick. Their fear? They won’t have an office to go to the next day,

However, sick employees going to work, known as presenteeism, can actually hurt companies by spreading germs. “You always have to weigh the risks and the benefits”, says Aaron E, Glatt, MD, a spokesperson for the Infectious Diseases Society of America and President and CEO of the New Island Hospital in Bethpage, NY. He suggests asking yourself “What great good can I do by being there?”

If there is an open wound, or you are sneezing or coughing, stay home. Even if you are not contagious, your performance may be impacted by remedies taken, or your driving may be impacted.

So don’t feel guilty if you feel miserable.

If you’re worried that your boss or coworkers will think you’re faking, here’s what to do:
• Speak with a boss or supervisor on the phone – don’t send an email – as early in the day as possible.
• Make sure to apologize for the inconvenience
• Keep the call short and to the point; your manager doesn’t need to know all the gory details.
• Don’t resort to fake coughs or talking while bent over the toilet: there’s no need to oversell it,
• Keep in mind that the more often you’re absent on Mondays and Fridays, the more suspicious it will seem.

Due to overwhelming support of MedsFile.com, we now want everyone to be able to create their own online Personal Health Record for FREE!

Starting this summer, we will begin to roll out exciting new optional services, the highlight of which is a service that will allow you to view your medical records through your MedsFile.com account like a credit report! This technological breakthrough will put your medical information in your own hands, and we will offer a never before heard of solution to your healthcare management.

Attention bargain hunters… All MedsFile.com customers who have created a FREE Personal Health Record before the new services are released will be able to sign up for those enhanced services at a reduced rate. If you are already a member of MedsFile.com, there is nothing more you need to do! If you are not yet a member, join now to ensure you get grandfathered in at a reduced rate!

When the new services are released, you may or may not choose to take advantage of the reduced rate.

Again, the current service will now always be FREE! What better time to join than now, and to refer your friends and family! It’s safe, secure, and easy to use. Anytime, anywhere.

Benefits of MedsFile.com:

• Build your own FREE Personal Health Record (PHR).
• Control what information you want to store.
• Store lists of Medications, Supplements, Allergies, Emergency Contacts, Immunizations, Personal and Family History, Procedures and Surgeries, and more!
• Access your medical records anytime, anywhere.
• Share your information to your comfort level with your caregivers and/or physicians.
• Save time when filling out forms at the doctor’s office.
• Improve communication between your doctors, pharmacists, loved ones, and caregivers.
• Reach better medical decisions.

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I know lots of you are worrying about the current swine flu outbreak. Not much is known yet about the extent of the outbreak, but officials are expressing “regular flu season precautions” in protecting yourself from the swine flu.

This comes from Dr. Richard Besser, acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He spoke Sunday at a White House briefing, and advised “common-sense precautions“:

• Wash your hands often.
• Stay home if you’re sick.
• Cover your mouth if you cough or sneeze.
• Avoid touching your eyes and nose in case the virus is on your hands.
• Listen to your local health authorities.

Dr. Besser added:

“Very frequent hand-washing is something that we talk about time and time again and that is an effective way to reduce transmission of disease.”

“If you’re sick, it’s very important that people stay at home. If your children are sick, have a fever and flu-like illness, they shouldn’t go to school. And if you’re ill, you shouldn’t get on an airplane or another public transport to travel. Those things are part of personal responsibility in trying to reduce the impact. “

Dr. Anne Schuchat, interim deputy director of the CDC’s Science and Public Health Program said, “In areas with no disease yet, a lot of what we can do sounds simple and repetitive but helps.”

Source: CNN

If you want to learn more… Visit the official World Health Organization (WHO) swine flu page.

Help MedsFile.com build a stronger Suite of Products and Services by Voting for our Video!

We have entered the 2009 Technology Association of Georgia’s People’s Choice / Entrepreneurial Contest. For this, we’ve filmed a one minute video about MedsFile.com. The grand prize will assist us with adding more functionality, services, and benefits to our current Suite of Products and Services.

So we need your vote, please!

You can only vote once per computer, so please tell everyone you know and vote from as many computers and cell phones as you can!

Voting ends on April 29, 2009 and it only takes a few seconds, so please vote soon, and please tell everyone you’ve ever met, too!

Vote for our video now at http://www.tinyurl.com/medsfile! We are video #18! Watch the video, and click the “Vote Here!” icon to vote for us.

Thank you!

MedsFile.com Corporate: Welcome to the missing piece of the healthcare puzzle.

MedsFile.com’s Product and Service Suite isn’t just for individual consumers. Now, all the information specifically geared towards our corporate partners is now online in its own separate sub-site: http://www.medsfile.com/corporate.

It’s live, so you may visit it now! Here’s some more information:

• There are three new sections devoted to information about our solutions: Solutions for Consumers, Solutions for Partners, and Our Platform.
• Each of those three solution sections have a link to download the information as a full color two-page marketing slick. The downloads are in PDF formation, and the information is obviously more pretty and presentable in the PDF file. That will give you some excellent information about us that you can print off and e-mail around.
• The other three new sections are: Our Process, and Investor Relations.
• The rest of the information on the corporate site is pretty much identical to the individual consumer site: “About MedsFile.com, Executive Team, Our History, Press Releases, Careers, Contact Us, Privacy Policy, and Legal Disclaimer.”

Go ahead and check it out, and let us know what you think!

How’s this for interesting… The Daily Mail reports that there exists a microchip that tells your physician if you’ve remembered to take your pills or not.

The digestible microchip is inserted into your pills. Once ingested, the 1mm wide sensors could tells physicians and surgeons whether pills have been taken correctly and on time.

Who would be candidates of such technology?

• Elderly
• Chronically ill
• People with heart disease
• Women on the Pill
• People with mental disorders like schizophrenia who simply cannot remember if they’ve taken a pill or not
• Anyone else just with darn bad memories

A harmless electrical charge would be activated once the drug is in the stomach. Then the information is picked up by a “sensing patch” on the patient’s stomach or back, which records the time and date the pill was digested. The patch also measures heart rate, notion and breathing patterns.

The information goes to a mobile phone and then to the Internet.

Trials are set to begin in the UK by two major drug companies within 12 months.

It is yet to be seen if this technology is seen as empowering patients by giving them and their families actual wellness measurements and peace of mind.

The Center for Retirement Research at Boston College reports that the cost of health care today will reduce the quality of life and impact the lifestyle for two-thirds of today’s retirees. A nursing home room can cost up to $77,000, and in-home care can run $20,000.

Paul Ballew, a senior Vice President at Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co. states that “this is the No. 1 issue staring us in the face over the next decade.”

Alicia Munnell, director of the Center of Retirement Research, says that the warning needs to be sounded now, and that with the hit taken by retirement accounts recently, people are unprepared for the future. Excessive spending and inadequate savings have accelerated this crisis.

Paying for retirement care can be mitigated by relying on Medicaid, buying long-term care insurance, selling a home, or utilizing reverse mortgage. Some people have fixed annuities or other products that guarantee payments to beneficiaries upon death in addition to providing long term health care coverage if needed.

Although 48 percent of long-term care recipients and their families pay long-term care costs out of their own pocket, there are several reasons why so few people buy long-term care insurance. Two of those reasons are the cost, and the fact that people are denied coverage because they wait until they are in poor health and then denied.

It is estimated that one-third of people age 65 today will need to enter a nursing home for at least three months.

Source: Atlanta-Journal Constitution

As patients around the world seek health care and treatment, medical tourism is a hot topic.

“Josef Woodman, author of Patients Beyond borders, a guide to medical tourism, told CNN that two to three million people travel outside their home country for treatment each year, while consultancy firm Deloitte calculates that 750,000 Americans traveled abroad for treatment last year.”

A top destination is “Asia, with Singapore, Thailand and India leading the way. Those countries are home to private health care chains that target international patients and are building modern, high-tech hospitals with a reputation for quality care.”

Private health care chains include Bumrungrad International Limited (BIL), Parkway Health, and Apollo Hospitals Group. These chains are accredited by the Joint Commission International (JCI), the global arm of an American nonprofit organization that accredits most U.S. Hospitals.

For Americans with low or no insurance, low prices make all the difference. Surgery costing $100,000 in the US can cost $8,500 in India. And there is no wait like there is in state-run countries such as Britain and Canada.

Developing countries can benefit from medical tourism. But for traveling Americans, they might still face costs when there is limited reimbursement from their health care plans, and they still might require some degree of pre-approval.