In a recent study, it was seen that when patient’s primary care doctors were able to photograph areas of concern and share them with dermatologists, the response time for a consultation reduced from almost 84 days to below five hours. Besides, it was also observed that there was no undie increase in utilization or cost that might be prohibitive to making the practice widespread. This study has a special significance during the pandemic because steps like telemedicine allow the people and physicians to accommodate social distancing.

The study authors mentioned that more and more health care practitioners would be adopting the use of digital tools to compelemnt in-perosn care in the future. IN the process of the current study, once the dermatologists reviewed the pictures of the concerning areas, they then responded to the primary care physician with clinical recommendations, including a triage determination of whether an in-person visit with a dermatologist was required or not. Also, the study dermatologists undertook these consultations within their regular clinical duties without needing additional dedicated time to the effort.

Along with the significant reduction in time to consultation, the study also showed that the difference in total medical costs did not considerably differ between the telemedicine patients and those in the studys non-telemedicine arm.

Reference: Jariwala, N.N., et al. (2020) Prospective Implementation of a Consultative Store-and-Forward Teledermatology Model at a Single Urban Academic Health System with Real Cost Data Subanalysis. Telemedicine and e-Health. doi.org/10.1089/tmj.2020.0248.