In the stew of various fees on your tuition receipt, the one overlooked by most might be the “student health fee,” but Cathie Wallace thinks it might be the most valuable.

For $6.33 per credit hour, students are provided discounted medical, dental and mental health care on campus. Yet, only 20 percent of the school’s 27,000 students ever take advantage of these services. They are available to all registered students according to Wallace, director of Health Services.

“Students who use our services rate them ‘very high’,” Wallace says.

On the Boca campus, Student Health Services is located on the second floor of the breezeway above Starbucks; at the Jupiter campus, the office is located in room 106 in the SR building. Although there are no offices on the Broward or Treasure Coast campuses, Treasure Coast contracts off-campus healthcare and Broward students are able to use the Nova Southeastern University Health Care Center.

For just $5, students can see board-certified physicians about many different injuries and ailments or just for a check-up; $10 will get you a dental exam and cleaning by a board certified dentist or dental hygienist.

Although there is a $10 and $20 “no show fee” for medical and dental services, respectively, Wallace explains the fee because “a no show will have taken a time slot another student could use.”

Wallace says 35 percent of students get a “same-day appointment,” and based on computer records, the average time in the door and out is 42 minutes; better service than Wallace gets at the doctor, she says.

Another important service available at Student Health Services is access to mental health counselors. Wallace says counselors are there to assist students with a variety of problems, including “depression, test and relationship anxiety, eating disorders and more.”

Last spring, the Student Health Service Web site (www.shs.fau.edu) started free online mental health evaluations that provide students with information on how to get an appointment with a counselor.

The “”student health fee” also funds the pharmacy located on the Boca campus, above the breezeway cafeteria, which Wallace says offers discounted prescriptions to registered students for “a lower cost than big box stores like Wal-Mart, Costco or CVS.”

“Health care is expensive,” Wallace says, but she is working with Student Health Advisory Council to help more students realize that it can be cheaper for them.

For more information on Student Health Services, call (561) 297-3512 or visit the website: www.shs.fau.edu