School-based telehealth program reduces ED visits by pediatric asthma patients

November 12, 2019

MUSC researchers report in JAMA Pediatrics an association between a school-based telehealth program and reduced emergency department visits for children with asthma living in a rural and underserved region of South Carolina.

This study shows the potential impact that school-based telehealth programs can have on children with chronic illnesses, especially those living in communities lacking access to health care.

The MUSC team, led by pediatrician Kathryn King Cristaldi, M.D., analyzed Medicaid claims for children ages 3-17 in Williamsburg County with access to a school-based telehealth program. They then compared them to those for children in four surrounding counties without school-based telehealth. Cristaldi co-directs the Telehealth Center of Excellence at MUSC, one of only two such centers in the nation.

The study found that children with access to school-based telehealth were 21% less likely to visit the ED for their asthma than those without such access. However, the three-year study found no association between school-based telehealth and all-cause ED visits.

Williamsburg County is a rural and medically underserved area of South Carolina situated along the I-95 “corridor of shame,” so dubbed for its high rates of poverty. MUSC developed this program to address disparities in access to care, linking children to pediatric experts via telemedicine.

But it was the school nurses who helped to ensure the program’s success by actively engaging the community.

School nurses, Cristaldi said, go out of their way to help students on a daily basis. So it was no surprise that they would be the ones to use the telehealth cart to connect sick children with expert providers at remote locations, helping to examine the children with special electronic stethoscopes and other peripherals.