Disparities in telemedicine access for Spanish‐speaking patients during the COVID‐19 crisis
Abstract
The rapid rise of telemedicine during the COVID‐19 pandemic raised the prospect of worsening health care disparities for vulnerable populations. We retrospectively compared pediatric teledermatology visits scheduled during the pandemic (03/17/2020‐07/31/2020) with in‐person appointments scheduled during the same period in 2019 and found that Spanish‐speaking patients had significantly fewer scheduled appointments in 2020 (9% vs 5%, P < .001). Among the telemedicine cohort, Spanish‐speaking patients were less likely to have an email address documented within the electronic medical record and less likely to have activated an online patient portal account prior to their visit during the pandemic (45% vs 62%, P = .017, and 23% vs 66%, P < .001, respectively). Our findings suggest that email connectedness may represent a bottleneck in telemedicine access for Spanish‐speaking pediatric dermatology patients.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
A US study comparing pediatric teledermatology visits scheduled post-COVID-19 with in-person appointments in the same period pre-COVID-19 reported that certain demographic groups such as Spanish-speaking patients were less likely to have teledermatology visits.
“A US study comparing pediatric teledermatology visits scheduled post–COVID-19 with in-person appointments in the same period pre–COVID-19 reported that certain demographic groups such as Spanish-speaking patients were less likely to have teledermatology visits [21].”
From A Glance at the Practice of Pediatric Teledermatology Pre- and Post–COVID-19: Narrative Review (2022) · cites this paper as [21]
Cites
Telemedicine Outpatient Cardiovascular Care During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Eberly, L. A., Khatana, S. A. M., Nathan, A. S., Snider, C. K., Julien, H. M., Deleener, M. E., & Adusumalli, S. (2020) · Circulation · doi:10.1161/circulationaha.120.048185 · Cited by 243 · see citing works
Tripathi, R., Knusel, K. D., Ezaldein, H. H., Scott, J. F., & Bordeaux, J. S. (2018) · JAMA Dermatology · doi:10.1001/jamadermatol.2018.3114 · Cited by 158 · see citing works
The digital divide: How COVID-19's telemedicine expansion could exacerbate disparities
Bakhtiar, M., Elbuluk, N., & Lipoff, J. B. (2020) · Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology · doi:10.1016/j.jaad.2020.07.043 · Cited by 109 · see citing works
A survey of adult preferences regarding recruitment for pediatric research
Amin, M. D., Bundogji, N., Zamora, S. M., & Magit, A. E. (2020) · International Journal of Pediatric Otorhinolaryngology · doi:10.1016/j.ijporl.2020.110108 · Cited by 9 · see citing works
Flagged first, then by citations
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Disparities in telemedicine use during the COVID‐19 pandemic among pediatric dermatology patients
Duan, G. Y., Ruiz De Luzuriaga, A. M., Schroedl, L. M., & Rosenblatt, A. E. (2022) · Pediatric Dermatology · doi:10.1111/pde.14982 · Cited by 20 · see citing works
A Glance at the Practice of Pediatric Teledermatology Pre- and Post–COVID-19: Narrative Review
Long, V., & Chandran, N. S. (2022) · JMIR Dermatology · doi:10.2196/34228 · Cited by 10 · see citing works
- Authors
- Blundell, A. R., Kroshinsky, D., Hawryluk, E. B., & Das, S.
- Affiliations
- San Juan Bautista School of Medicine (PR)
- Massachusetts General Hospital (US)
- Corresponding author
- Das, Shinjita
- Venue
- Pediatric Dermatology
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2020-12-27
- Volume
- 38
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 947-949
- ISSN
- 0736-8046 (ISSN-L)
- 1525-1470
- OpenAlex
- W3117358886
- Cited by
- 50
- References
- 4
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2025: 6 · 2024: 5 · 2023: 16 · 2022: 13 · 2021: 7
- FWCI
- 6.75
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Pediatric Dermatology (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Telemedicine and Telehealth Implementation
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › General Health Professions › Interpreting and Communication in Healthcare
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › General Health Professions › Health Literacy and Information Accessibility
- Keywords
- telemedicine, teledermatology, Spanish-speaking patients, health care disparities, COVID-19 pandemic, patient portals, health care access, language barriers
- MeSH terms
- COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2, Child, Humans, Retrospective Studies, Telemedicine, Pandemics
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
