By ANNA CARILLO
Student Reporter
TimelyCare is a medical service that is available to currently-enrolled Amarillo College students, their dependents and their spouses.
It is a platform where they can access free medical and mental health services anytime from anywhere.
Denese Skinner, AC’s vice president of student affairs, said, “Each semester AC surveys our students about their needs and medical care always is at the top of the list. The ability for AC’s academic students and their dependents to have access to free medical care and personal counseling is unquestionably a game changer.”
Jerrod Hinders, the AC Counseling Center coordinator, said, “Our biggest barrier is awareness of the service. We are finding that as more students, faculty and staff become more aware of the service, student utilization is exponentially increasing. With this increase, we are still seeing high-levels of student satisfaction.”
This lack of awareness seems to be the main reason students might not be using these services, according to Skinner.
“The only reason that I can think that students are not using it, especially if they have children, is that they do not know about TimelyCare. We hope that students who do know about it will tell their peers,” she said.
Many students said they have heard about it, but didn’t understand the extent of the benefits offred from TimelyCare. “I had seen the emails and the flyers on campus, but I didn’t know much about what TimelyCare was,” Julissa Serrano, a biology major, said. “It’s crazy to find out there are so many benefits that they have.”
Even with many students not knowing about TimelyCare, the statistics are still pretty positive, according to Hinders.
“Over the past three months, we have seen a 279% increase in student registrations. This represents 641 registered students as of Jan. 31 and puts Amarillo College on track to be ahead of other community colleges facilitating these telehealth services. This is very exciting, as we are still seeing exponential growth as the convenience and quality of this service becomes more visible,” Hinders said.
“Students are giving very positive feedback about the quality of services. Over the fall, the average feedback on services was a 4.7 out of 5-star rating. The average feedback on providers was 4.9 out of 5 stars. Furthermore, 75% of students have already reported improvement in their mental health since utilizing TimelyCare,” Hinders said.
According to Hinders, TimelyCare isn’t just a physical health service, there are multiple services available. “Students have been accessing the wide array of services offered by TimelyCare – free scheduled and on-demand medical and mental health services, health coaching, peer support, mindfulness and self-care tools, prescriptions savings card and psychiatry services with referral from the Counseling Center.”
You can access TimelyCare by clicking the link on ACConnect under the AC apps and email section or by downloading the TimelyCare app. “The average wait time to see a doctor is seven minutes,” Skinner said. “The wait time to talk with someone about an immediate mental health concern is four minutes.”
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