ABSTRACT
Many patients treated at Stanford for haemangiomas must travel from the rural Central Valley or Central Coast to receive care. Because of COVID-19, there was an increased use of telehealth which shifted the management of haemangiomas. Our study aimed to identify the implications of this change and its impact on access to care for patients who live far away. Using the Stanford Research Repository, we established two cohorts of patients seen at Stanford dermatology clinics with a haemangioma diagnosis: one from 2018 and one from 2022. We took a random sample of 50 patients from each and collected data on haemangioma treatment prescriptions, age at diagnosis, age at dermatology encounters, and distance travelled to clinic. We subdivided the 2022 cohort into in-person visits and telehealth appointments. While no patients utilized telehealth in the 2018 cohort, 69% of patients in the 2022 cohort utilized telehealth for their first Dermatology visit. In the 2022 cohort, 52% of patients utilized telehealth for at least one dermatology appointment. The average age at presentation for the 2018, 2022 in-person, 2022 telehealth groups were 121 , 208 , and 116 days, respectively. Average age at diagnosis was significantly younger for the telehealth cohort compared to the 2022 in-person cohort, and there was an increase in prescriptions for treatment in the telehealth cohort. These results show that increased telehealth utilization as a result of the pandemic has allowed patients to be seen by a dermatologist at an earlier age and receive a prescription for treatment for haemangiomas.