In Bamberg, South Carolina, school-based telehealth is bridging gaps in care by offering immediate access to primary, acute, specialty, and behavioral health care services directly in schools. Even pediatric orthopedic services are provided through virtual care, which speeds up treatment for children and reduces unnecessary travel or long waits in an Emergency Room.
“For a specific pediatric orthopedic, our kids have to travel to Columbia or Charleston which is almost an hour,” said Bretta Kittrell, a family nurse practitioner at Bamberg Family Practice. “And those visits can be two to three days later before they’re getting casted or splinted.”
Instead of students missing school and parents missing work to take their children to a pediatric orthopedic office out of town, Kittrell provides orthopedic services through school-based telehealth, along with x-rays at Bamberg Family Practice.
Eleven-year-old Kingston was spared a costly trip out of town for orthopedic treatment after he injured his wrist while playing in P.E. at Richard Carroll Elementary School in Bamberg. His wrist was assessed virtually by Kittrell without him having to leave the health office in his school. Kittrell determined he did need x-rays to rule out a fracture or a break and Kingston was able to get those taken the same day at Bamberg Family Practice, where the images showed he only had a sprain.
His mother, LaTrell Mendoza said she feels lucky to have flexible working hours but she knows a lot of other parents would face financial difficulties from time off work and travel out of town for treatment.
“The school having that is very convenient and helps parents out a lot so they don’t have to miss work because some parents are hourly workers and they only have so much paid time off and if they miss too much time from work and they’re hourly that could be the difference between them being able to pay the light bill,” Mendoza said.
The school-based telehealth program in Bamberg serves seven schools in Bamberg County through a partnership with Palmetto Care Connections, a nonprofit organization that assists health care providers in connecting rural and underserved South Carolinians to quality services through broadband, technology, and telehealth programs.
