DR. STROWD: I'm Lindsay Stroud, and I'm on faculty at Wake Forest University School of Medicine, and I'm here today with Aaron Farberg, who's on faculty at Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas, Texas… I think the first topic we wanted to talk about is the use of telemedicine in dermatology. Tell me a little bit about what you guys did at Baylor?

DR. FARBERG: We've been utilizing teledermatology for many years, even before COVID and the pandemic. And so, it was quite an easy transition for us. Of course, the push was a bit more towards doing more telemedicine as the pandemic really hit. But now that we're sort of in the aftermath, it's figuring out, what are the next steps in how you're going to incorporate teledermatology into your practice moving forward. And for us, it really has become a big convenience factor.

It's never going to replace the doctor-patient face-to-face relationship; however, it sure does add to convenience, particularly for follow-ups. Consider your acne patients. You have them on a great regimen. I used to always make the joke, "Hey, we don't need to have you follow up just for you to come in and give me a thumbs-up and say that we're doing a great job," but I can check in easier or more easily with the telederm appointments. How are you guys utilizing telederm?

DR. STROWD: I think pretty similar. Maybe we're not quite as advanced as you guys were kind of pre-COVID, but we also pivoted and did a lot of teledermatology at the beginning of COVID and tapered down a little bit once things started opening back up. But I think there was definitely a subset of patients that absolutely love telemedicine and wanted to stick with it.

DR. FARBERG: Do you have a day set up where you see just teledermatology or are the patients sprinkled in within your schedule? How are you managing that?

DR. STROWD: Yeah. We've actually blocked off time. So our providers each did about a half-day a week kind of over the past, I guess, 18 months or so of telemedicine. We have not really kind of sprinkled it into our clinic, although I know other providers have done that. Other departments at our institution have certainly done that, but we kind of chose to do more of a block time. And a lot of times I would do it at my academic office, not really necessarily in the clinic space proper but in my office, which was more convenient for me at times, too.

DR. FARBERG: Absolutely. I think having those blocks of time is absolutely critical. Otherwise, it can really disrupt your daily flow, in particular with patients that are calling and then waiting online for their appointment. And then by the time you finally get to them on the camera, you get a picture of the ceiling fan instead of the patient, which we all know we've had many a times now. So –

DR.STROWD: Yeah, you definitely have to be flexible and adaptable with telemedicine, because sometimes the tech doesn't work, and sometimes it may be a patient that's not very tech-savvy.

And one of the things I really loved about telemedicine that I never thought about before we started doing it was, it's really cool to see people in their homes, to just get to see kind of what their home looks like, especially patients that you've taken care of for a while. It's kind of like an added layer of connection with the patient. They're usually meeting you on your turf, and you're kind of meeting them on their turf with teledermatology, and it's not something I ever thought about but I thought was kind of a cool thing to get to see.

DR. FARBERG: It's a window into their world. Absolutely.

DR. STROWD: Well, Aaron, this was fun. Thanks for coming and talking with me, and hopefully we shared some information that can be useful for some of our listeners.