MOORHEAD – For approximately 18 months, the Center for Holistic Health (CHH) has worked to implement TimelyCare, a free, confidential health platform that allows college students access to medical care and counseling at all hours of the day.
“(TimelyCare) is kind of a one stop shop for health and wellness,” Jenn Barker, the Director of Student Conduct and Title IX, said. “It really offers our students more opportunity to have outreach to people or to support on campus and off campus, when the CHH isn’t the right fit, or maybe they’re not open, and it’s just a great tool for our students to have. They also have wellness, I know, like yoga and different wellness activities on there to give students a little extra boost.”
The decision to implement TimelyCare was a lengthy one, and required Heather Simonich, the director of the CHH, Concordia’s administration and the CHH team to collaborate and discuss students’ needs.
According to Simonich, the class of 2027 played a vital part in this discussion. A Qualtrics survey sent out at the end of the 2023-2024 school year allowed first-year students to share what they wanted within a health service.
“In visiting with students, faculty and staff, we learned a lot about the needs of our students and the barriers that exist to access services here at CHH,” Simonich said. “When students are in nursing clinicals or student teaching or are just over scheduled, the limited availability of CHH only being open eight to five, Monday through Friday was certainly a barrier to care for some of our students. Importantly for me, TimelyCare is also about reaching the students that have never felt comfortable seeking help at CHH.”
According to Simonich, there were other virtual healthcare platform candidates considered, but TimelyCare stood out from the rest because of their willingness to learn about Concordia as a whole to provide further assistance to students. Additionally, a key advantage of TimelyCare is that it was not created in response to the COVID-19 pandemic; it existed beforehand. Therefore, the program is more developed.
“We just did a lot of digging into the pros and cons of the various companies that offer these types of supports. It was really important to us that the company that we’re working with took the time to learn about Concordia have a crisis plan should a student have a medical need or a mental health need while they’re getting virtual care then take the time to learn about our community so that they can also triage or direct students to other places for support,” said Simonich.
TimelyCare is free of charge for students, but there are a few confines to the resources provided. For example, students can schedule 12 free counseling sessions per year but are unable to exceed that amount. Furthermore, TimelyCare itself is a free service; however, if prescriptions are ordered through TimelyCare, they must be covered by insurance or purchased out of pocket.
“It’s a big financial investment for the college as well as the students coming here, so I think that was a little bit of a hindrance right away, because it is such a big investment, but when you look at what it provides for our students and keeping them in school, you know, retention is huge, so the more we can do to support them to be able to stay here and get the education that they deserve, the better,” Barker said.
TimelyCare offers the services through its app, which students are heavily encouraged to download.
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