We here at Magnus believe that the best part of working in schools is having the chance to improve student health care. The more we work with school nurses, coaches, and administrators, the more we realize the biggest concern is for their students health. From gathering and organizing the health forms, to making sure they are accessible when they are needed, Magnus Health is there to help you through the entire process.
Client Profile When Waring School mailed required student health forms to parents each summer, those forms were returned to the school via traditional mail. Nurse Jan Lindsay then spent the two weeks prior to the start of school organizing piles of paperwork, making a list of those students with missing forms, and then contacting those students’ parents. “It involved a lot of chasing down of families via email. As the beginning of school approached, we then went to the phones,” Lindsay said.
Even with those efforts, there were some parents who waited until the very last day, when Waring School left for their annual camping trip in New Hampshire. “That was the worst – dealing with forms and medication instructions as we were trying to load up the vans and get ourselves to camp,” Lindsay said. Each year, these same issues resurfaced and the receptionist frequently had to assist in making phone calls as well, making it difficult to tally just how much time the cumbersome process consumed.
May came along and just as quickly, it's nearly completely gone. Here's what we've been up to this month.
Magnus users, I'll be short and sweet. With a simple click of the button, and a process no different than in days past, you can upload and combine multiple health forms for a student's requirement. Plus, you get to preview the final document before attaching it to the requirement. Check out the shots below and see for yourself.
Client Profile
When Trent Inman first joined Oak Ridge Military Academy, he was stepping into the unknown. He didn’t have a military background, instead, he’d come from a cardio surgery step-down unit in a hospital. He went from treating very sick patients to treating cadets with ordinary illnesses to injuries incurred because of physical training. “It was different for me because the cadets would get in trouble for something, and their discipline was to do extra PT, and then they’d come to me because they’d have huge blisters and other injuries, and that type of approach was creating more work for me.”
April just might be the perfect month. It's filled with sunny days and cool, breezy nights. Even better, you can feel the excitement of summer's fast-approaching days in the air. We're feeling that same excitement, because we're gearing up for one of our busiest yet most exciting seasons. As schools wind down for summer break, we're charging full steam ahead.
Take a look at what we've been up to!
There's a vital, but often unseen world in business that most of us can't understand no matter how hard we try. It involves long numbers, decimals, spreadsheets, and complex formulas, and it usually makes my head hurt.
That special and scary world is Finance, and we're lucky enough to have a stellar Finance Team at Magnus Health who keeps us on track and makes sure that all the numbers (quite literally) add up.
One member of that team is Sam Yaworski, our Financial Analyst who manages a lot of nitty gritty tasks like invoices and closing the books. Her day-to-day may not be glamorous to you and me, but for someone who loves spreadsheets and organization, Sam is right at home.
When we speak with school health departments, we're asked on a daily basis how our product can work for the athletics department as well. The good news is, the very same product that can be customized for the school nurse and counselor can also be customized for the athletic trainer and coaches. Here's how it works.
Does your athletic trainer need to chart an injury? Specify what is injured? Note which muscle was strained or ligament was torn? Indicate which sport and/or activity caused the injury? We understand the needs for athletic trainers are different than for nurses, and that's why we've granted the ability to customize a treatment note to your specific needs. It's as simple as editing a template and adding, changing, removing any fields as you see necessary.
Take a look at the brief screencast below and see just one way you could format your athletic treatment notes. Keep in mind, two things. 1) This is only a sample, you have the freedom and capability to customize your treatment notes as you see fit. 2) When you purchase the Health Services suite, we will create and customize these templates for you.
Groups are an integral part of using Magnus SMR to the fullest. It's easy to think of a couple scenarios when you'd need them - teams and clubs, for example. But we encourage clients to think outside of the box when it comes to groups. At the root, groups do in fact, group students. But if you dig a little deeper, they segment students in a way that allows you to use your privileges so that the appropriate persons have access to the information they need, and only that information.
This can also allow you to review a subset of student documents at a single time. Perhaps you need to review just the international student population for a specific insurance form. Or maybe you need to apply a specific requirement to only a certain group of students. SMR groups will allow you to do both of those things. Also keep in mind that students can belong to multiple groups at any given time, so you can sort your students in any number of ways to meet your needs.
Client Profile Kathy Finney has worked as an administrator at Norfolk Academy for 20 years. In that time, she has seen the importance of data grow from necessary business information to a strategic communications tool. Having worked with all of the data-dependent departments that help our institutions function and grow, Kathy has an unrivaled understanding of best practices of data collection and sharing across campus.
Norfolk Academy struggled with collecting health and immunization information from parents each year. When they moved to Magnus to solve that problem, “we were trying to find a solution to make things easy for parents and for us,” said Kathy Finney, Associate Director of Communications. When Norfolk Academy initially launched Magnus, it was after they’d already collected all the information from parents. So, "there was confusion as to why we were asking for information that had already been submitted. We got off to a rocky start,” Finney said, but with a few lessons learned and alterations made, parents are catching on, and Finney and her team have seen the results in 100% compliance.
So how did they make things easy on parents and get 100% compliance?
Welcome back! As we all get back into the swing of things after Spring Break, let's take a minute to bask in the awesomeness that was March. We saw dabbles of warm weather, released exciting software updates (have you seen the student photo feature?), and behind the scenes, we're still busy coordinating the 2014-2015 Annual Research Questionnaire of Independent School Health Services. Let's dive in!
Client Profile 
The nurses at Saint Mary’s School spent countless hours collecting, reviewing, and tracking the required documentation for nearly 250 students. Seven forms per student meant 1,750 forms had to be manually tracked using a spreadsheet, and hundreds of reminder phone calls had to be made.
While some students arrived early for pre-season athletics with all required documents in hand, some others did not have all of their information completed and were trying to move into student housing. This forced school staff members to scramble to complete forms, contact families, and occasionally take students to doctor’s appointments.
That was the email that started my Magnus journey close to seven years ago. I would officially sign on board about three weeks later.
I think this same message translates into what we are offering schools that join the Magnus family. I would word it like this: Considering software for better student care at your school? You might think there is risk, but we know it is very rewarding.
Ah, February. Sandwiched between holidays and springtime, it can be a bit dreary. But we've been keeping ourselves busy and creating our own cheer by pushing out new software updates, recording client training videos, and hosting guest expert webinars. And if that wasn't enough, we also found time to relax and celebrate Valentine's day with each other by bringing in heart-healthy snacks named after famous couples (Elvis and Priscilla's peanut butter and banana graham crackers was a personal favorite). We had fun during February, and we sure hope you did, too.
I'm not going to pretend that The Oscars has an enormous amount in common with school health. But I will argue, there are lessons to be learned and/or reiterated from the glamorous affair - and none of them are about fashion.
At Magnus, we spend a lot of time thinking of ways to make schools' and parents' lives simple. One of our favorite tools to accomplish that goal is our easy-to-use parent portal, MyMagnus. When parents need to fill out or update their child(ren)'s health information, they can do so by signing in to their secure Magnus Health account via MyMagnus.com.
To make logging in even easier for parents, we recommend putting a link on your school's website (if you are not already using one of our software integrations). By adding a link to your website that directs parents to log in to their Magnus Health account, you save parents time and reduce the number of phone calls to your school's health and technology departments.
But enough about how wonderful it is. Let's get started with our three steps to add a Magnus Health login link to your school's website.
Client Profile It's been a busy month here at Magnus HQ. We've been hosting webinars, showcasing client success stories, chatting about K-12 technology, and even spending a few spare moments volunteering in our community. There's a good chance you may not have caught it all as it happened, which is why we've got a quick January recap below. Let's get to it!