• Name: Cheryl Tardif
• Job Title: Student Health Center Director
• School: Hebron Academy
• Location: Hebron, ME
• Type: Boarding & Day School, Grades 6-12
• Size: 250 students
• Website: hebronacademy.org

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Hebron Academy’s Student Health Center Director, Cheryl Tardif, is upfront about her most dreaded task as a school nurse – “The most tedious part of a school nursing job is obtaining and managing health records.” For Tardif and her team, the process began every August prior to the new school year, and “the major problem we faced was receiving incomplete records from parents.” For each of the 250 students at Hebron Academy, five to seven pages of health records are required (1,250-1,750 total records), but many parents would return only a portion of those pages.

The pages “were sent in the mail in hopes they would be returned prior to registration day. Getting all the forms filled out and returned was a challenging effort,” Tardif said. For those students with missing information, the three school nurses had to make follow up phone calls to remind the parents. They then had to make charts and checklists of missing information, make more phone calls, and start the process over again. Three nurses spent 30 hours each week, for three weeks leading up to school, to manage this process. That’s 270 hours spent on these administrative duties alone. Even then, “We were lucky to get two thirds of our charts complete,” Tardif said. Once the information was received, Tardif and her team had to store all of the records in filing cabinets for the currently enrolled students, while graduated student records were packed up, and moved to a vault.

Even though a significant amount of time was spent on the collection process to ensure each student’s compliance, because the system was paper-based, Tardif and her team were left hoping the information would be submitted instead of being able to control the process themselves. It was this lack of control that prompted Tardif to seek out a better solution. “We wanted to computerize all our medical records, eliminate mailings, and increase ease and compliance in obtaining records,” Tardif said. She noted that multiple software solutions were evaluated, but three main factors contributed to the decision to move forward with SMR: “Magnus was willing to use our existing forms, listened to our needs regarding compliance, and allowed us to control how often and when we would send notifications and email reminders to parents.”

In their fourth year with Magnus, Tardif and her staff at Hebron are happy with their results. “This year we had 90% compliance of completed records the first week of school. Even the remaining 10% had most of the information we needed,” Tardif said. That 90% compliance is a result of an automated process, where mailings are eliminated and staff have more control over the process. They’re no longer just hoping for a good outcome – they’re using automated reminders to continually stay in touch with parents and encourage prompt responses for outstanding items.

Some of Tardif’s favorite benefits of the system are over and above the obvious savings in resources. “Certainly time and money are both being saved. However, it is the ease of use for parents, nurses, and the fact that it is HIPAA protected that I love most,” Tardif said about SMR.

Parent ease of use is a big positive for Hebron Academy. “[Parent] response is evident in their compliance. They do it and in a timely manner. It is easy for them and they know what has to be done,” Tardif said. She also noted the system is user-friendly for international parents. “We also have a 35% international population. Parents from around the world use SMR without difficulty,” she said.

Parents are completing tasks, compliance is going up, and the nursing staff is saving time and resources – it’s a win-win situation at Hebron Academy.

For more on Hebron Academy’s experience using Magnus, read the full case study.

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