ESE Telehealth’s Partnership with Lake Oconee Academy Sees Positive Results


The training, support, and services have been foundational to our success.

Lake Oconee Academy (LOA), a PK-12 public charter school in Greensboro, GA, has partnered with ESE Telehealth to practice a range of strategies dealing with COVID that have proven particularly effective in terms of both promoting community health and keeping students engaged in school.

LOA’s approach to COVID has evolved significantly since March 2020. Like many other schools, LOA shifted quickly that spring to virtual instruction for all students.

When returning to school in Autumn 2020, the school offered students and families the choice of returning to campus or continuing with virtual instruction.

Dr. Otho Tucker, CEO of LOA, says teaching and learning were challenged by the shifting of students and staff on and off campus, but LOA decided that changes were necessary, including requiring that all students return to campus for in-person instruction, and developed new policies and protocols for the 2021-22 school year in line with DPH guidelines and administrative/executive orders from Governor Kemp.

That school year, LOA decided to partner with ESE Telehealth. ESE Telehealth offers schools a true turn-key telehealth platform, allowing schools to implement a safe and secure telemedicine program without administrative burden.

As part of LOA’s partnership with ESE Telehealth, the school has been able to administer highly accurate rapid COVID tests. LOA also has been reporting results electronically, which are readily transferable to the primary care physicians of the families.

Parents/guardians are contacted before a student is tested and may be present for the testing – either virtually or in person. “Diagnoses can be accompanied by prescriptions, making it a convenient, efficient, and cost-effective system for expanding and improving health care for the school community,” says Tucker.

Tucker shared that preliminary observations and working expectations are that both attendance and performance data will be better this year, with these new systems in place and with more students on campus, than last year, when the school had no on-site clinic or testing capacity and students were forced to quarantine off campus.

Tucker says that after considering different options ESE Telehealth met all of their standards. “The training, support, and services have been foundational to our success.”

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