Teledermatology Benefits Underserved Populations, Reduces Physician Burnout

This content was produced independently by The American Journal of Managed Care^® (AJMC^®) and is not endorsed by the American Academy of Dermatology.

Elizabeth Jones, MD, FAAD, Thomas Jefferson University Hospitals, discussed the significant potential of teledermatology to enhance health care equity, particularly for underserved populations, as evidenced by data presented at the American Academy of Dermatology 2025 annual conference in Orlando, Florida, March 7-11. She highlighted how teledermatology can reduce barriers to care, especially for patients in rural areas, those with mobility issues, or those who are immunocompromised. Furthermore, Jones emphasized the benefits for physicians, noting that teledermatology can reduce burnout by offering flexibility and a less physically demanding approach to patient care.

She believes this can improve job satisfaction and help retain experienced doctors, ultimately contributing to a more resilient health care system. Overall, Jones sees teledermatology as a crucial tool for increasing access to dermatological care and promoting health equity.

This transcript was lightly edited for clarity; captions were auto-generated.

Transcript

Teledermatology has the potential to bridge gaps in access to dermatologic care, particularly for underserved populations. How do you see teledermatology impacting health equity in dermatology?

Teledermatology is a huge opportunity to serve many different populations. It's something where we can get creative with how we're delivering health care. If you think about it just on a patient level, an individual patient cost basis, there are a lot of reasons why you would want to use that in terms of improving equity.

One thing is that it reduces their time to travel to the clinic. The perfect example is a patient in a rural area who has to travel 1 to 2 hours to see you. That time savings, the cost savings, travel costs, all of that is reduced. Patients include those who are immune suppressed and don't want to go out in a more crowded area or a medical setting in general, patients who are elderly [and] dependent on others to get them places, patients who are institutionalized, and those who are physically incapable of just going from point A to point B. Now they have a new way of getting access to care and seeing their doctors in a timely fashion. There is a huge opportunity there.

I think, in terms of helping reduce costs and increasing access as a whole, if you're trying to not just serve one patient and help the system work for them, but looking at all of these patients who are trying to get in to see a dermatologist, how can we do this more efficiently so that we can serve all of these patients at the same time as providing good care?

We have a lot of "store and forward" systems where, basically, it's used as triage to understand: who of these patients can we simply meet their needs by providing a diagnosis, and possibly even just reassuring, and that's the end of it? There are a lot of [instances of] providing preliminary, very mild acne with really good treatment protocol for that patient, and they don't necessarily have to be seen in the office. What that does is it reduces the need for that patient to come into the clinic setting where you need more resources, more staff, [and] all of this, which is, in a sense, limited. You're really trying to preserve those resources for patients who are really in need, patients who have severe rashes, patients who are suffering, patients where you're really worried if they have a malignant lesion, and we need to get them in in a timely manner so that they don't have worse sequelae from this issue down the road.

In that sense, it helps us more efficiently serve more patients, and so that increases access, which helps with equitable care across the board. I think one final thing on this whole aspect is and something that's probably not thought of by a lot of people, but something that I've realized in my own practice, is that the ability to provide telemedicine, it provides a little bit of breathing room for the doctors who are providing these services. We are so busy in our clinics day to day, seeing high volumes, it can be physically exhausting and mentally demanding. You get to the end of the day and you're just like, phew. You're very tired, so it offers you that breathing room where you're sitting, you're talking one on one with a patient through live interactive or you're reviewing photos and being able to provide feedback. It allows you to tap into that creative ability of doing what you normally do in a different way. It allows you to be more flexible with perhaps, where you're providing these services. You're not exhausting your staff if you, per se, just add on a telehealth visit during your lunch for a patient in need and you're not asking the staff to come in and see that patient with you.

I think it truly decreases physician burnout, allowing doctors to stay in the game longer. Whether it be a longer clinic day, because they're doing it at the end of their day, or that it adds to that job satisfaction, where now they're able to actually continue to be doctors. That's what we're facing with right now; we're losing really good doctors, so I think that it's going to help us be more resilient as physicians in the future.