PA Archdiocese Schools Receive Grant for Enabling Efficient Student Health Recordkeeping

Gale Given, president of Verizon Pennsylvania, joins students from the Epiphany of Our Lord School, who will benefit from the Verizon Foundation's grant to the Archdiocese of Philadelphia.

For an Archdiocesan school nurse in Philadelphia, about 80 percent of the day is consumed by manually documenting and filing health reports from 67 schools throughout the Archdiocese. Approximately 30,000 student's medications, daily visits, and health screenings are documented and monitored by hand.

The Verizon Foundation has helped to alleviate the much to-do by presenting the Superintendent of Schools for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, Mary E. Rochford, with a $15,000 grant at Epiphany of Our Lord in South Philadelphia.

The Verizon Foundation's grant will equip nurses with 35 miniature laptop computers, called netbooks, which will provide the tools to convert all current health records to an electronic database. The Archdiocese of Philadelphia's nursing staff will now be able to remotely access all health records while traveling from school to school using the web-based application program, Health eTools for School.

Through this innovative method of electronic data, records will be maintained more efficiently and grant parents access to notifications, updates, and test results. More importantly, the new data process will give nurses more time to dedicate to the health and well-being of the children - rather than to paper.