JONESBORO- NYIT already planned to take control of the Arkansas State Student Health Center before the outbreak of COVID-19 and now has to adapt to caring for students safely during a pandemic.

Photo courtesy of astate.edu | The Student Health Center at Arkansas State is now operated by NYIT.

A-State Chancellor Dr. Kelly Damphousse announced in an email April 13 NYIT’s Student Health Center was fully operational.

“Like many healthcare providers across the country, the SHC is making improvements to the management of the clinic during this pandemic,” Damphousse said. “They have recently loaded a telemedicine program into their system that will allow students to have virtual visits with a physician for non-urgent needs from the comfort of their own dorm room, home or apartment.”

Although this is a new platform for NYIT, the college is not new to the idea of telemedicine.

“Telemedicine is a big deal for us,” Associate Director of External Relations and Marketing Casey Pearce said. “We’re one of the only medical schools in the country that incorporates Telehealth into the curriculum of our first-year students. This has been the case since we opened in 2016, not in response to the current global health crisis.”

Besides keeping students and health center staff safely away from each other to limit exposure to the coronavirus and other diseases, there are other benefits of telemedicine as well.

“In addition to limiting exposure for students and our staff, another reason we’re doing this is to limit our use of personal protective equipment (PPE),” Pearce said. “We have a very finite amount. There are concerns that our region will see a surge of COVID-19 patients in the coming weeks and our physicians will be called up to see community patients. They will need to be protected in that event.”

Some students may notice a white tent seemingly attached to the NYIT Student Health Center, but the tent is actually in front of the St. Bernards Urgent Care facility that shares the building with center.

“St. Bernards is screening patients for COVID-19 in the tent,” Pearce said, “but we aren’t involved in that operation.”

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