The Challenge

Communicating with parents is an important part of being a school nurse. But between tracking down health forms, collecting allergy information, and general health visit updates, this communication can take a lot of time and manual effort for an already understaffed health office.  

An electronic student health record (SHR) solution can help! A long-time Magnus Health customer, Charlotte Country Day School relies on the SHR to communicate with parents through informed conversations, in-depth reporting, and simplified enrollment processes. 

Informed Conversations

Prior to Magnus Health, Wendy Barber, RN, was used to paper health forms and traditional charting methods. Parent contact information was stored in a separate system that required extra time to search for phone numbers and email addresses before manually contacting a parent. Now, she has access to this information in one central system that not only streamlines her workflow but improves her communication with parents.  

“I love the fact that when I’m charting on a student, I have immediate access to parents, emergency contacts, cell phone numbers, and email addresses in one place,” says Wendy. “If we need to call a parent for a head injury or to discuss sensitive information, I can just pick up the phone and dial straight from Magnus Health.” 

Wendy Barber, RN, School Nurse & Magnus Administrator

The SHR also helps keep Wendy and her staff in-the-know about important student information. As health professionals in the 21st century, parents expect school nurses to know a range of information about their child beyond scrapes and bruises. With Magnus Health, Charlotte Country Day’s health staff can see everything in one place from athletic participation to learning accommodations. This makes it easy to answer questions and meet parents’ expectations.  

“Magnus Health gives us so much information right in one screen so we can easily have informed conversations with parents,” says Wendy. 

This information is also crucial for communicating across departments. For example, if a child has a concussion that will impact their ability to attend soccer practice and participate in gym class, the school nurse can quickly share that information with their coach and gym teacher via Magnus Health.

“Magnus Health gives us so much information right in one screen so we can easily have informed conversations with parents.”

Wendy Barber, RN, School Nurse & Magnus Administrator

In-Depth Reporting

Charlotte Country Day also utilizes smart lists and auto-reminders in Magnus Health to communicate with parents. Instead of manually reaching out to every parent who has missing forms, they can run a quick report to identify which parents have an overdue task and send a mass email directly through Magnus Health.  

“[Smart lists] have made a huge difference in terms of not managing different databases and lists for different groups of things. It’s so easy to set up,” says Wendy.  

The reporting feature is also helpful for internal communications. Ahead of field trips, Wendy can pull a report of participating students and share it with the classroom teacher or chaperone. This significantly reduces staff workload and saves valuable time in the process. 

Simplifying Enrollment and Re-Enrollment

Another way the school benefits from an electronic student health record system is during enrollment season.  

Because Magnus Health syncs with Veracross as the school’s student information system, when the admissions office adds a new student to the database, it automatically syncs with the SHR. The health office is able to quickly see the new student’s information and can start coding them appropriately, putting them into appropriate user groups, and sending health forms to parents. 

During re-enrollment, Magnus Health makes it easy and convenient for parents to fill out the required health forms. Instead of filling out the exact same information for three different children, parents can utilize the autopopulation feature to automatically update shared information across siblings. They can also easily toggle from one child’s vital health record to another within the same portal.  

“Parents want easy platforms to work with. They want things that are user-friendly, quick, and convenient. Magnus Health definitely enhances our enrollment process,” says Wendy.

Better Student Care through COVID and Beyond

Each of these efficiencies was amplified during the COVID-19 pandemic. Whereas some schools quickly adopted an SHR once the pandemic started, Charlotte Country Day was already several years into their use of Magnus Health. 

“I can’t imagine going through COVID without an electronic database [like Magnus Health],” says Wendy. “We sent out a lot of communication during that time. The fact that parents didn’t have to learn a new system in addition to everything else was a huge benefit for faculty and staff.” 

Regardless of the season, Wendy believes that parents will always value user-friendly and easily accessible information about their child’s health. To learn more about how Magnus Health can help your school streamline parent communication, request a free demo of our leading SHR solution.