How important is it that the medical alarm monitoring center is in the United States?

KOMO news from Seattle recently published an advice article on how to buy a medical alert system. In it they repeated the warning/advice from Consumer Reports that you should make sure the alert monitoring center is located in the United States.

(Of course, this only applies to people living in the United States. There are medical alert providers all over the world.)

So does it really matter?

Of course it does. With emergency response, you most definitely want US based call centers for several reasons. The biggest reason, in my mind, is that since the entire purpose of a medical alert system is to get you help when you have an emergency, it’s important that the responders have a good working knowledge of how emergency help works in our country. They’ll need to be activating the EMS response system. Or they’ll need to call a neighbor or a family member.

Many people think the most important thing is the ability to speak good American English. For many of us, that’s true. But for an increasing number of people a really important capacity of modern call centers is that they have access to native speakers in almost any language spoken in the United States.

So it’s certainly important to have a call center located in the United States.

But it’s a little bit of a false problem.

Because I’ve never yet run across a call center from a reputable mainstream company that isn’t located in the United States.

So you really don’t need to consider it much. But you can still ask the question. And if the company you’re talking with says their call center for American customers is outside the United States, run away. They’re probably taking other shortcuts and you don’t want them as a provider.

Here’s the link to the original article if you want to read more.

http://www.komonews.com/news/consumer/Shopping-for-a-medical-alert-system-297342391.html