IU, city provide after-hours health care services

The IU Health Center and Bloomington Hospital provide lesser-known after-hours health care services for students.\nHugh Jessop, director of the Health Center, said a trial telephone service has been in place since January and allows students to make after-hours calls to receive medical advice from trained professionals.\n"Our doctors and nurse practitioners are on call," Jessop said.\nStudents can call the Health Center between 5 and 11 p.m. weekdays and 8 a.m. and 11 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays. There are workers manning the phones who relay the medical message to an on-call physician or a master's-level nurse practitioner who will then call the student back within minutes with medical advice.\nThe doctor or nurse suggests possible options for the student. If necessary, he or she will direct the student to the emergency room.\nThe practitioners will then call the Health Center and dictate the student's condition or symptoms into a recorder so a patient's record is ready and accessible the next morning if the student needs to visit the Health Center for further assistance.\nJessop said part of the idea behind an after-hours medical advice line was to stop students from spending large sums of money for medical assistance if they don't need to.\n"Students who have used the service have called us back and said, 'Thanks, you saved me a trip to the emergency room,'" Jessop said.\nJonna Risher, media and communications manager for Bloomington Hospital, said that such a large range of issues can bring someone to the emergency room, so it is too difficult to give a ball park figure for emergency department costs. But the mandatory health fee all students pay every semester makes the cost of services at the Health Center comparatively cheaper than at a hospital or private practice.\n"There are going to be a couple of times when the doctor says the student has to go to the ER," Jessop said. He said the medical advice line can tell students what they can do to help themselves if the problem is not urgent and allow them to come to the Health Center when the doors open up the next day.\nDean of Students Richard McKaig said the parents advisory board had recommended that there should be some provision for after-hours health care. \n"It was something they saw as a priority," McKaig said. "When we were considering funds, the Health Center proposed the pilot program and split the cost."\nMcKaig said the after-hours phone system was among the highest-rated priorities among the IU Parents Fund. The idea of such a service had been discussed for the past few years.\nRisher said students have options off campus as well. Bloomington Hospital provides two full-service urgent health care clinics, Promptcare East and Promptcare West, which are staffed with physicians employed by the hospital who can assist in everything up to trauma or crises.\nThe Promptcare facilities are open 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. on a daily basis. The West location is closed Sundays.\n"By and large, the student body at Indiana University is a very healthy group, and they have a tendency not to need health care services," Risher said. "Accidents happen, and that's when we would like them to decide where they need to go based on the severity of the situation." \nRisher said if the situation is severe, a student should decide whether to call an ambulance or have a friend drive them to the emergency room.\nIf a student does not have a family physician in town and cannot wait until the morning, that is when they need to be taken to the ER, Risher said.\nThe after-hours medical assistance line is in a pilot state, but McKaig expressed satisfaction with it and said he would like to see the after-hours phone service provided by the Health Center to continue, \n"I think it's important for the students to decide whether this is a good service and something they are happy with," McKaig said. "It has to be a good deal from a student's perspective and a good use of parents' funds for the pilot program." \nThe IU Health Center is located at 600 N. Jordan Ave. Promptcare West is located at 3443 W. Third St., and Promptcare East is located at 326 Woodcrest Dr.\n-- Contact senior writer Tony Sams at ajsams@indiana.edu.