This story originally appeared on KERA Breakthroughs.
While most second graders at Gilbert Elementary are sitting at lunch tables, sticking slices of cheese pizza in their mouths, Diego Montealvo is standing in the nurses office, opening wide for a piece of metal.
“Ahhhh,” he says, as the school nurse aims a digital otoscope at his tongue. He’s staring up at a doctor who appears on a big screen above a rolling cart. This doctor isn’t at the school in Irving — she’s at an office building in Dallas. But she’s looking at Diego from the screen, and like a conductor, she directs the school nurse to examine him with the medical instruments.
Diego isn’t sick today, but when he came in to see the school nurse last November, his throat was red and he was having trouble swallowing. At this point, mom or dad usually has to leave work to pick up their kid. They have to call the doctor for an appointment, maybe visit an urgent care center or the ER. The kid misses school, the parent misses work.
With telemedicine, Diego can now connect remotely to a doctor at through Children’s Health from school. Back in November, he was diagnosed with a virus and prescribed an antibiotic in between classes. His mom, Isabel Montealvo, said that saved her time and money.
“After I left work, all I had to do was pick up the prescription from the pharmacy because they sent it over,” she says.
Children’s started a telemedicine program at a pair of preschools in 2013. Today, there are screens and carts in 57 urban and rural campuses across North Texas. It’s one of the largest school-based telemedicine programs for kids in the country. Dr. Stormee Williams – she’s the one who was peering into Diego’s throat and nose – explains each school is selected based on need.
“We look at the map of where kids are going to the ER for non-emergent issues and where can we step in to fill that gap for the family and for the kids,” she says.
The number of kids who are uninsured in Texas is high: one out of nine children doesn’t have health insurance, compared to the national average of one out of six. For these kids, Williams says it’s not easy to see a doctor the flu, pink eye, or a stomach ache. Of course, she admits not everything can be diagnosed via telemedicine. Rashes, for example, can be tricky.
“Sometimes, I can look at a rash and say that’s a ringworm,” Williams says. “Other times, I need to see what it feels like, so we will send [the kid] to their primary care doctor.”
Research shows parents can save time and money with school-based telemedicine. The focus now is on whether telemedicine is improving kids’ health. Only a few studies have been done so far. Dr. Quianta Moore, a Baker Institute Scholar in Health Policy, points to research showing kids who accessed psychiatrists via telemedicine did even better than those who completed in person visits.
“In that study it showed that the adolescents prefer to engage in these visits (rather) than in person consultations,” she says.
Another study in the journal Pediatrics found that children with type 1 diabetes who used telemedicine at school had better blood-sugar control and fewer visits to the ER.
The challenge with school based telemedicine, Moore says, isn’t technology, its cost effectiveness. There’s the cost of equipment – tens of thousands of dollars – and the risk of not getting reimbursed by insurers. People from Children’s Health actually had to work with Texas State Representatives to change the law so that doctors can get reimbursed by Medicaid.
Although Children’s isn’t billing patients directly at this point, there are plans to create payment models for both insured and uninsured kids.
In the meantime, Children’s will be collecting data from their program to see if it can help kids like Diego miss fewer days of school, and help parents save money and time. By 2016, the telemedicine program could be in 80 school campuses across North Texas.
