TOPLINE:

Children who need dermatologic care waited significantly longer for appointments with pediatric dermatologists than with general dermatologists, and more than 30% of general dermatologists did not accept new pediatric patients.

METHODOLOGY:

• Researchers conducted a cross-sectional study using a mystery caller approach across 30 cities in 29 US states from October 21 to 25, 2024.
• They contacted 137 board-certified general dermatologists from the American Academy of Dermatology database and 226 pediatric dermatologists from the Society for Pediatric Dermatology database.
• Trained mystery callers requested new-patient appointments for three clinical scenarios: infantile hemangioma (6-week-old patient), atopic dermatitis (3-year-old patient), and acne (14-year-old patient).
• Primary outcomes were acceptance of pediatric patients and business days to the first available appointment.

TAKEAWAY:

• Compared with 100% of the pediatric dermatologists, 69% of general pediatricians accepted pediatric patients (P < .001).
• Median wait time was longer for pediatric dermatologists than for general dermatologists (89 vs 53 days; P < .001).
• Across all clinical scenarios, median wait times to see a pediatric dermatologist vs a general dermatologist were longer, including for infantile hemangioma (49 vs 26 days; P < .001), atopic dermatitis (67 vs 31 days; P < .001), and acne (62 vs 30 days; P < .001).
• Private practices had shorter waiting times than academic practices (incidence rate ratio, 0.54; P < .001). Children waited longer to see pediatric dermatologists, regardless of whether the clinic was academic (median, 102 vs 68 days; P < .001) or private (median, 71 vs 41 days; P < .001).

IN PRACTICE:

“We found that children waited 68% longer to see pediatric dermatologists than general dermatologists,” the authors wrote, noting that “this disparity persisted even when controlling for practice setting, suggesting factors beyond setting contribute to longer pediatric dermatologist waiting times.” The study results, they added, “highlight persistent and clinically meaningful barriers to timely pediatric dermatologic care.”

SOURCE:

The study was led by Elizabeth Garcia-Creighton, University of Colorado School of Medicine, Aurora, Colorado, and was published online as a research letter on March 18 in JAMA Dermatology.

LIMITATIONS:

The study did not assess insurance status and referral pathways, which could have underestimated true delays and obscure downstream referral-based access patterns.

DISCLOSURES:

The authors did not disclose any funding source and reported having no relevant conflicts of interest.

This article was created using several editorial tools, including AI, as part of the process. Human editors reviewed this content before publication.