New virtual healthcare program helps Peach County students, teachers stay in classroom
Atrium Health Navicent and Peach County Schools partnered to launch a new school-based virtual healthcare program this school year.
The program acts as an extension of healthcare services provided by existing school nurses and is meant to help students, teachers and staff receive quicker, more comprehensive care while allowing parents to join visits virtually.
During these virtual visits, patients meet with nurse practitioners without leaving campus. If a nurse practitioner determines a patient is not contagious, they can return to class. The district said this can help teachers to not miss work, help students to not miss instruction and allow parents to stay at work and not take time off to drive their child to a doctor’s appointment.
Atrium Health Navicent’s nurse practitioners can send prescriptions to the patient’s pharmacy.
“If [students] stay in the classroom and we can keep them healthy their whole career in school, it sets them up for success in the future,” said Laura Gentry, CEO of Atrium Health Navicent Peach.
The program is designed to reduce healthcare disparities in rural communities like Peach County that lack access to medical professionals, transportation services and resources.
“We don’t have enough physicians in our rural communities,” Gentry said. “A lot of times the parent may have to pick up their child and take them to Warner Robins or Macon and have to leave the county … And they may not have that transportation, so then they put it off and their medical conditions can get worse. So being able to utilize virtual help has really been a game changer.”
The school-based virtual care is available for all students, teachers and staff at Peach County Schools to voluntarily enroll in. For students, their parents must complete consent forms first.
If a school nurse determines that virtual care is right for the patient’s situation, a medical assistant from Atrium Health Navicent will help get the patient prepped for their virtual visit, do basic vital signs and connect the patient with the nurse practitioner. Parents can also join the virtual appointment if they wish to.
The medical assistants use high-quality cameras to help the nurse practitioners best assess the patients.
“You can see down in the eardrum just as clearly, you can see down the patient’s throat to assess their tonsils,” said Gentry. “It’s just amazing equipment.”
Peach County Schools’s Director of Student Services Gentry Trice said the new program has received “a lot of positive feedback” from teachers who have participated, parents and even the school nurses.
“One of the nurses told me that [the virtual care] was actually quicker than waiting on the parent to come pick them up to take them to the doctor,” she said.
As of Monday, 31 students and nine faculty members have used the service.
“Out of that group, 26 of them were actually allowed to remain at work or in class,” said Trice. “The other 14 were sent home, so that’s 65% that actually remained in school, which is awesome because that was our goal, to keep our students in school as much as possible.”
The Peach County Schools partnership is Atrium Health’s first school-based virtual care program in Georgia and its second nationally.
In a release, the hospital network said the Peach County Schools program was based on its first program launched in rural counties outside Charlotte, North Carolina in 2017, which reduced unnecessary emergency department visits in the community by 40% in its first year and brought an 80% decrease in early school dismissals since non-contagious students were permitted to return to class.
Gentry said that the virtual care equipment was provided by the Navicent Health Foundation at no cost to the school district.
She also noted that the school-based virtual care program is not meant to replace a patient’s primary care physician and any followup should be done with their primary care physician.