|Photo by Joselyn King| Leah Stout, left, special education director for Ohio County Schools, speaks on the school district's proposed memorandum of understanding with WVU Medicine-Wheeling Hospital to provide a medical clinic at Madison Elementary School, while hospital President and CEO Doug Harrison sits by waiting to answer questions. The MOU was approved during Tuesday's board of education meeting.

WHEELING – Ohio County Board of Education members Tuesday night first approved a memorandum of understanding with WVU Medicine Wheeling Hospital to start a medical clinic at Madison Elementary School.

Next, they approved a policy setting forth the policy for medical and dental treatment of students there. Madison School already has an established dental clinic.

Both measures passed with a vote of 4-1, with board member Molly Aderholt voting against. Board president David Croft and board members Andy Garber, Anne Hercules and Bernie Albertini all voted in favor.

Aderholt, an attorney, said the votes were among the hardest she has made while a member of the board of education, and she indicated she might have voted differently had the policy vote came first and the MOU vote second.

“I fully agree and recognize that there are children in our community who do not have access to health care, and that is a problem,” Aderholt said after the meeting. “But my issues are I don’t think existing state law takes into account what different issues and questions might come up when you merge healthcare with the school setting. Parents aren’t necessarily there, so this is healthcare being provided without a parent being present.

“Now parental consent is required for a student to go and receive any kind of treatment, and I think the (policy passed) does a good job of requiring it. I just think of issues that could arise from merging healthcare into the school setting, and I would like to see the legislature set some guardrails around that and some parameters. That would make me feel better about having it in our schools.”

Aderholt had asked Croft to reverse the discussion of the MOU and the policy on the agenda, and he chose not to do so, she said.

“I hope WVU Medicine understands the board is very thankful for what they provide for the community. It’s just me having some heartburn over what it looks like to provide healthcare to children without a parent being present.”

Aderholt added that even as an attorney and a mother, she wasn’t aware of the privacy protections that allow older children to receive treatment without their parents’ knowledge for more adult matters such as pregnancy and sexually-transmitted diseases. The law also doesn’t specify at what age a child is old enough to have these protections, she said.

During discussion in Tuesday’s meeting, the board amended the proposed policy to specify the clinic would start out by treating only students at Madison to initially avoid the privacy issues of treating older youths.

The MOU and subsequent policy that were passed establishes that a nurse practitioner will be present at Madison School for a total of eight hours per week, with the hours per day still to be established.

Croft and Superintendent Kim Miller said there will be two layers of consent needed before treatment. Consent forms first will be sent home for parents to sign at the start of the school year. Then, if a child seems ill at school, an administrator will call the parent and ask if they permit their child to go see the nurse practitioner at the clinic.

“We just want a clinic so if a child has an ear ache or a sore throat, they can call home and say ‘Susie has a sore throat. Do you want to meet us here, or do you want them to go ahead and see her?'” Miller said. “After, we can always call them back and tell them Susie needs an antibiotic. We just want to have that conversation.

“We just want to provide healthcare to our children who do not have access to it.”

She said 47 of West Virginia’s 55 counties already have similar healthcare clinics in place.

The nurse practitioner has already been hired for the facility, according to WVU Medicine Wheeling Hospital President and CEO Douglas Harrison, who was present at Tuesday’s meeting.

“We are going to treat it like we would any clinic,” he said. “We’ll take any form of payment, and if you can’t pay, we will still treat you.”

There will be financial losses from the clinic, Harrison acknowledged. He suspects most of the children receiving treatment will be from families with no medical coverage, or who have Medicaid.

Dave Crumm, director of operations for Ohio County Schools, provided a timeline for how soon construction needed to build out to make both the healthcare and existing dental clinic handicap accessible can be completed.

He said additional measurements are being taken this week, and the fire marshal also is coming in to inspect the space.

“It would be great to have it done by the end of the school year,” Crumm told board members.