Niswonger Virtual Health Clinic unveiled at EHS: Service to be offered at each city school

Published 5:37 pm Tuesday, May 2, 2017

Elizabethton City Schools System students now have a chance to receive access to doctors and practitioners from the area — right from the comfort of their nurse’s office.
School administration met inside Elizabethton High School Tuesday afternoon to perform a demonstration of telemedicine, a service offered through a partnership with Niswonger Children’s Hospital and First Assist Urgent Care through Mountain States Health Alliance.
The Niswonger Virtual Health Clinic, now available in each of the five schools in the system, is available in 66 schools across the state.
Assisting the children in the region is priority number one, according to Niswonger Children’s Hospital CEO Lisa Carter, who added the program was unveiled in fall of last year.
“We wanted to look at a way to better serve the children in our region,” Carter said. “This was a real nature fit. We got involved with a technology company called eMD Anywhere and learned that we could offer acute care visits in schools for kids. It goes with our mission of taking care of children outside our walls of the Children’s Hospital and reach more kids as possible.”
EHS nurse Wendy Wright and student Cameron Coleman provided a demo of how the service worked inside the nurse’s station while Family Nurse Practitioner Christy Nave, based in Elizabethton, worked on the other side of the monitor.
With this service in place, practitioners are able to help children with different symptoms, which include:
• Fever
• Sore Throat
• Allergy Symptoms
• Ear Pain
• Nausea
• Abdominal Pain
• Skin Irritation
• Inflammation
• Limb Sprains
• Chronic Illness
• Urinary Tract Infection
ECS Systemwide Nurse RN Teresa Robinson added the resource will be key for students moving forward.
“We’ve been active for probably a couple of weeks now,” she said. “Basically, what’s going to happen now is that at the first of the next school year, is that we’ll send registration packets home for each of the students so their parents can fill those out. We’ll turn those into Mountain States Health Alliance and they will scan all of those and get the information into their computers. That way if a child comes in and has his papers filled out, all we have to do is click on his name and have his information available.
“We were a little skeptical at first,” Robinson continued. “It wasn’t the technology, it was more about the nurses being so busy anyways. But now that we’ve been able to put our feet in there and started to get a little wet, we’re starting to see that we can make appointments and make time for these visits. It’s an awesome thing.”
Another benefit, according to Robinson, is now children that may not normally have a chance to see a doctor can do so.
“That’s the best thing about telemedicine,” she said. “You’ve got kids whose parents work constantly or need to see physician and don’t exactly have the opportunity to do so. Mountain States works with their insurance. If you have a $25 copay, that’s what they will charge you. They’ll file insurance, if you don’t have any insurance … they will try to help. We’re very excited about this partnership and for what Mountain States is doing for our school system.”
At the start of the new school year, Robinson added packets will be provided to parents and guardians to allow simpler access for students.

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