Telehealth and Allergy Services in Rural and Regional Locations That Lack Specialty Services

Abstract

Secondary to the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic, telehealth quickly peaked as the dominant health care modality and its use still remains high. Although allergists and health care systems adapted quickly to adopt telehealth, its increased use has both highlighted its benefits for patients and allergists and demonstrated known concerns with delivering allergy specialty care to rural and regional patient populations. With increased concentration of both patients and allergists in urban areas, the ability to provide allergy specialty care to the rural and remote population continues to remain a challenge despite the advantages leveraged through telehealth. Herein, we review aspects specific to the rural patient population, tele-allergy outcomes with these patient cohorts, and efforts, both past and present, taken at different levels within the allergy community to promote our specialty through specific telehealth modalities to address and engage the rural and regional patient.

Keywords: Allergy; Regional; Rural; School; Telehealth; Telemedicine.

Figure 1

Telehealth scenarios for allergists and patients. Conducting a telehealth visit has 3 main aspects: the distant site, the modality used, and the originating site. (A) The distant site is where the allergist is located. (B) The modality is the platform used by the health care provider and the patient to communicate, while the (C) originating site is where the patient is located. Additional descriptions of each modality can be found in this article’s Online Repository at www.jaci-inpractice.org.