Seguin ISD brings free healthcare services to students

Dalondo Moultrie The Seguin Gazette

Trips to the nurse’s office are potentially transforming for Seguin Independent School District students.

The district is partnering with a health provider to bring free services to all families in the district, said Pete Silvius, the district’s director of whole child initiatives.

“Our goal is to support the health needs of our families that may not have access to health care and typically in the past have relied on the school nurse to provide that care,” he said. “This builds capacity within our nursing staff to be able to access additional support right there in the school nurse’s office.”

Since about mid-November, Hazel Health has provided expanded health services for students in all Seguin ISD schools. In the program, students who visit a nurse and possibly need help a nurse is unable to offer can speak with a doctor working with Hazel Health, Silvius said.

Via a teleconference using a phone or video, a doctor can prescribe medicines, coordinate care with family physicians, consult, recommend over-the-counter medicine at the school or provide referrals.

Currently, school nurses are not allowed to give medication to students, Silvius said. That could change with Hazel Health’s help, he said.

“Each school nurse has a little kiosk that is through an iPad. They can remotely connect with the doctor and the door could do a couple things,” Silvius said. “They would prescribe an over-the-counter medicine that is right there in the nurse’s office that could treat a symptom that might be of concern to a child and a family. They could also potentially diagnose something that needed to have a prescription called into a local pharmacy.”

Parents have to sign up to participate in the program before their students can use Hazel Health, he said. And even after registering, parents have to give permission for their children to accept services in the nurse’s office, Silvius said.

Students participating in distance learning at home due to the coronavirus pandemic also can participate in the program, he said.

“All students have access to it,” Silvius said. “It’s a little bit extended for at home access, roughly 6 in the morning until 6 at night. It’s trying to bring that nurse’s office care to the virtual learner at home.”

As of Tuesday, the district had nine visits of students participating in the program and working with Hazel Health, the whole child initiatives director said.

Seguin ISD staff began looking into programs for extra health help last year even before COVID-19 shoved healthcare to the forefront of so many people’s minds, Silvius said. Once the virus reached Guadalupe County, the district intensified its efforts.

Hazel Health is scheduled to offer free services through the end of the current school year at Seguin ISD, he said.

“After the school year, the families that would like to utilize the service, if they have private insurance, there would be a copay,” Silvius said. “Students that are on Medicaid, undocumented, uninsured, they would have access free of charge.”

Expanding capacity for the district to better care for and support its students comes at no charge to the district either, he said.

Hazel Health has doctors on staff and people who are former educators so they are well prepared for whatever faces them regarding students, Vice President of Marketing Silver McDonald said. The business, which operates in hundreds of school districts across the country and several in Texas, basically bills Medicaid or the family’s insurance for services rendered, she said.

“If they don’t have insurance, we actually have different programs available including being able to help them with grants or financial aid,” McDonald said. “Equity and access to quality healthcare is our founding mission, so ensuring all children can have quality health care.”

The program is not constructed to replace families’ general practitioners, Silvius said. Instead, district leaders hope Hazel Health professionals can work with families in coordination with their family doctors, he said.

And if families have no particular physician they see, Hazel Health can help change that, Silvius said.

“It’s really designed for those families that for whatever reason can’t access a family doctor,” he said. “This would be a shorter stopgap for that situation. The hope would be to connect them with a family doctor that could do a follow-up and start seeing them on a regular basis.”

Dalondo Moultrie is the assistant managing editor of the Seguin Gazette. You can e-mail him at dalondo.moultrie@seguingazette.com

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