School-Based telehealth for our Spartanburg Regional Healthcare system, Tele-Health team is a service that can provide onsite care at school while the students in school, virtually, through a camera.

We actually have a telehealth cart that I'll dial into, they'll link up to, and the school nurse will be there onsite with them so that they can receive treatment there while at school.

She's able to see us.

It's like a real time visit.

It's like you're actually in the doctor's office.

She can see inside their ears.

She can see inside their throat.

She can actually listen to their lungs.

So it's like a real visit.

For us and our definition is a way for students to get care for mild, acute conditions like ear infection, sore throat, poison ivy, things like that.

So our scope might be smaller, but our access to students has evolved and gotten a lot larger over the past few years.

Ivan just finished third grade.

He's a good kid.

He's a healthy kid, but he does suffer from allergies.

Really bad and infections or sore throat here and there.

He's been very active now.

He likes playing soccer, so I know he's exposed to getting injured at school.

So knowing that he can use a telehealth at school if he gets injured is convenient.

If something bad happened to him, he can be seen in and they can notify me if I need to take them somewhere else.

But it's becoming a easy for him to get checked on right on the spot.

So in Cherokee County and Union counties, there's a lot of underserved population.

There are rural areas.

So it is further distance to drive to the closest urgent care.

Or maybe a lot of those students don't have a home primary care office.

So it's very helpful with this population just to improve access of care.

It's helpful for the parents to reduce stress on the work load.

If they're missing work, you know, that could have a domino effect on the family stress at home.

Normally what we'll do is, you know, if a student comes in and we identify that they do need to be seen by the telehealth We have a form here that we do pull, which is parental consent.

We do all vitals, we check weight, height, then we email all the forms over to Santana.

She gives us an appointment time.

Then we connect with her and parents can come.

But a lot of times they do not come.

But we tell her what they are.

So we ask the parent like, you know how long symptoms have been going on and we relay all that information to Santana and let her know what pharmacy to call a medicine if they need it.

And she does all that.

I feel like they get the same quality of care, knowing that he gets the same health care at the office and at the school.

So, im.

very eased at knowing that he's being taking care of the same way, that if I were to take him to the to his pediatrician.

The biggest benefit is for one, keeping the student in school when your child's sick, that can take hours out of the day to try to get an appointment.

The pediatrician office fills up very early with appointments, so then you might have to go to immediate care where you may wait hours in worst cases, so just the benefit of keeping them there.

They may miss 20 to 30 minutes of class versus a whole day or half day.

It's really a wonderful program.

It really is it.

I wish everybody, the parents that I have signed up and they have used it, they were like, I wish I realized it was easy this easy last year because I would have went ahead and signed my child up.

And the parents that have come in and saw it and they were like, oh, I didn't realize you were able to see the doctor.

And I was like, yeah, it's like a real time visit.

Like you're actually in the doctor's office and she's able to see everything we can see.

Telehealth makes it makes the health care more accessible and convenient.

And like I said, things can be treated more effectively faster when you have that service, when you have telehealth at the schools, because I say you don't, you cut down a lot of run time of, the wait time on the bill, making appointments and waiting for the doctor visit.

So I think is very beneficial.