It’s 10:17 a.m. and your phone rings.
It’s the school office. Your daughter’s ear hurts and she’s in the nurse’s office. You’ve got a full schedule of meetings and your pediatrician’s first available appointment isn’t until tomorrow.
That familiar knot of stress starts to form, until the school nurse says: “We can connect her to a health provider right here at school. You can join the appointment remotely from your office and if your daughter needs any medication, you can pick it up from the pharmacy on your way home from work.”
This is the promise of school-based telehealth and it’s changing the way Canyons School District supports families and employees while also curbing absenteeism. Schools across the country have seen a sharp increase in absenteeism since the pandemic, and while the reason students miss school can vary, school-based telehealth is proving to be a valuable tool for combatting it.
“Students can’t learn when they aren’t feeling well and they can’t learn when they aren’t in school,” says Canyons nursing specialist Jen Gerrard explained Tuesday to FOX13’s Good Day Utah anchors. “This is our second year doing telehealth and what we’ve seen is that 87 percent of students who use telehealth return to class the same day.”
Now, based on the program’s early success, Canyons is bringing telehealth to each of the District’s 42 schools.
Employees can take advantage of the program, too and connect to a licensed health care provider while at work to address such common ailments as: allergies and asthma fare-ups, colds, fevers, stomach issues, ear infections and urinary tract infections.
Most health insurance plans are accepted, and for those without insurance, the cost per visit is $79.
With the program growing, Gerrard hopes to see even greater gains in attendance, though she says, keeping students healthy while also making life a little easier for working parents is benefit enough. “When kids can get the care they need quickly and affordably, and they miss less school — that’s a win for everyone,” she says.
