This fall, Salem R-80 joined 25 other school districts in southwest Missouri with access to health care without leaving school.
The CoxHealth Virtual Visits initiative allows students and staff to be seen virtually by a CoxHealth-affiliated care provider when they become sick at school.
Visits are completely optional, and parents participate in the visit either in person, or by phone or video using a smartphone or other video-enabled device without having to leave work or home.
“It allows kids be diagnosed quickly, and also helps reduce absenteeism,” said Tabitha Ferwalt, Virtual Visits product manager with CoxHealth.
“They are able to be connected with a provider virtually that works for Coxhealth, and we are able to treat things like spider bites, insect bites, colds, flu and strep throat,” she said. “We do offer onsite rapid strep testing there at the school.”
The visits also treat common childhood illnesses like sore throat, rashes, ear infections, sinus infections and lice.
Students are not treated without the parent’s consent.
“Before we launched the program, we sent consent forms home with the students asking if they would like to participate in the school clinic,” Ferwalt said.
At any time during the day, if a child tells the school nurse they are not feeling well, they have a fever, they need to go home, or have another issue, the school nurse can call the parent and tell them the onsite clinic is available if they want to see a doctor right away.
“And that gives the parents the option to come in and participate in a visit if the child is not contagious enough to go home but still needs to see a doctor for an ear infection or insect bite, or the parents can connect remotely,” Ferwalt said. “We text or email them a link to a video room, and they’re able to join that room virtually and still participate in that visit without having to leave work.”
The Salem Virtual Clinic is based at the Upper Elementary School. TKD Foundation purchased the equipment and is funding the cost of the employee that does the visits for three years. Virtual Clinic navigator Shauna Camden works four hours a day, five days a week at the school. All of her training was through Coxhealth. She is CPR certified, EpiPen auto-injector certified for severe allergic reactions and certified to do strep throat tests, Ferwalt said.
If a diagnosis is made, prescriptions are sent to each family’s preferred pharmacy. CoxHealth partners with Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals at CoxHealth to cover prescription costs and the cost of the visits for uninsured children. For those with private health coverage, parents pay the co-pay, usually the same as a normal office visit, with the remainder billed to insurance, she said. Students on Medicaid are covered 100 percent.
The program really got rolling in Salem in October and November with 23 virtual visits.
“Things are going really well,” Ferwalt said. “Salem has really taken off. We were ready to go at the first of the year but we didn’t actually start until about October because we were training the staff and so on.”
Nineteen of the visits were in November. The totals are good for a program just starting out, she said.
The telemedicine effort began in early 2017. At the time, six districts were involved. Now, the list includes schools in Aurora, Ava, Buffalo, Cassville, Eminence, Forsyth, Galena, Lamar, Liberal, Marionville, Miller, Monett, Mount Vernon, Mountain Grove, Ozark, Rogersville, Seymour, Sparta, Summersville, as well as Salem and Maries County R-II.
If funding can be found, look for the program to expand in Dent County in the future.
“We are absolutely looking to grow the program,” Ferwalt said. “We’re continuing to look for grant funds to expand in that area.”
