Public service announcement for U.S.-based parents of school-aged children who are attending school on site:
At some point, your child will have some cold/allergy/flu symptoms, and your child’s school will want your child to have a letter from a pediatrician clearing your child to be at school. Some pediatricians require a negative Covid test in order to write a letter while others do not. If your child’s pediatrician requires a negative Covid test in order to write that letter, you can prepare now to make this process faster, easier, less expensive, and less stressful.
Here’s what I recommend that you do now:
1. First, find the nearest* urgent care (or equivalent) that does 15-minute Covid tests, will perform them on children, and has an MD on site at all times. Some or all of the cost of the visit or test will not be covered by insurance, but some of it may be. Make a mental or physical note of its hours of operation. A friend adds, “[L]ook ahead of time about which providers at the Urgent Care are in your insurance network.” *I recommend picking one as close as possible to your child’s school since the school probably opens earlier than the urgent care.
2. After you select an urgent care but still today, check with your child’s school nurse (ideally in writing) that a letter from that on-call urgent-care MD will be sufficient to return your child to school if the urgent-care MD writes a letter allowing this child to return to school. They probably will accept the urgent care’s MD letter, meaning you can cut the pediatrician out of the loop entirely, saving yourself a couple of hours and a second co-pay (which, yes, I did pay this morning). If your child’s school requires a non-rapid test or more than one rapid test, you will find out during this step.
3. Finally, also today, download the urgent care’s phone app, select the location appropriate to you and, if possible, pre-register yourself and your children for the app so that checkin is as quick as possible when needed.If you do this prep now, you should be able to get the kids to school within a couple of hours of its start, have a low-stress game plan in place so that you (or your partner, as applicable) aren’t scrambling, save a few bucks, and not miss quite so much work.
Wishing you a great academic year.