ESRH announces program to diagnose illnesses at schools

Pictured: Dr. Rhonda Hall, Accomack County Schools Superintendent, and Jeanette Edwards, Eastern Shore Rural Health CEO.

Eastern Shore Rural Health is spearheading a program that will provide a mobile cart to enable nurses in the Accomack County School System to better diagnose student illnesses on site without having to remove the student from school and take them to the doctor’s office.

According to Eastern Shore Rural Health CEO Jeanette Edwards, a pilot program is expected to begin in early 2025 at one school in the system.  Edwards said that  it is necessary to run the pilot program in order to work out the kinks in the system.  Once that is done, the program can be expanded to cover all of the schools.

The program will provide a diagnostic cart which will enable nurses to perform tests on a sick student.  Then, if necessary, the information can be provided to an Eastern Shore Rural Health clinician for further diagnosis via Telehealth.  Edwards said that in many cases medicine can be prescribed without the patient having to go to a clinic for diagnosis.

Edwards said the goal is to get the sick child treated as soon as possible. Sometimes it can take a day or two to get an appointment and get the child in for treatment. Edwards said that this not only will get the child back to school more quickly but in many cases would minimize the time parents would have to take off from work because of a sick child.

Edwards told the Board, “ I hope you are as excited about this as I am.  I never would have thought about this before COVID, but the use of telehealth during he pandemic changed the flavor of what we do and opened up the possibilities of incorporating telehealth.”