MOLINE, Ill. — Making health care easily accessible to students is the Moline-Coal Valley School District’s goal in constructing a new health clinic just steps away from the classroom.
The district is working with Rock Island-based clinic School Health Link on the addition, and staff from School Health Link will run the clinic inside Moline High School.
The school-based clinic will provide “better direct access to kids and to families and make those barriers a little bit fewer, so kids can access those types of health services that they need,” Superintendent Dr. Rachel Savage said.
But the high school nurse’s office isn’t going anyway.
“The new partnership is not intended to replace our school-based nursing staff. It is intended to complement our school nursing staff,” Savage said. “We have amazing nurses at Moline High School and at every single one of our schools.”
The new clinic will offer additional services that otherwise aren’t available at the nurse’s office, including physicals, mental health services, immunizations and more.
Services will be billed through insurance if the student has health coverage, but if the student does not, the clinic will work with families on a sliding scale to cover costs.
The end goal of the new clinic is to make sure needs are better met so that students can be more successful in school, Savage said.
“That is the bottom line,” she said.
Construction of the clinic is expected to be completed by this fall.