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Objective: We aimed to explore the impact of telehealth in the setting of COVID‐19 on patient access to ambulatory rheumatologic care at our academic public health system and to determine whether telemedicine visits had a beneficial impact on access to our rheumatology ambulatory clinics. Methods: We compared completed, no‐show, and cancellation rates between in‐person clinic visits and telemedicine appointments over a 10‐week time period before Ohio's initial executive order responding to COVID‐19 (premandate period) and a 10‐week time period afterward (postmandate period). Scheduling and appointment data were retrospectively extracted from the medical center's electronic health record. Results: During the premandate period, when all visits were in‐person, the total number of completed visits was 930. The percentages of cancellations, no‐shows, and completed appointments of all appointment activities were 31.43%, 13.12%, and 55.46%, respectively. During the postmandate period, when telemedicine visits were added, the overall total number of completed visits was 1038. The percentages of cancellations, no‐shows, and completed appointments of all appointment activities were 53.45%, 13.91%, and 32.64%, respectively, for in‐person appointments and 0.12%, 8.48%, and 91.39%, respectively, for telemedicine appointments. Conclusion: Telemedicine during the COVID‐19 pandemic resulted in higher rates of completed appointments and lower rates of missed appointments in the rheumatology outpatient clinic compared with in‐person visits during and prior to the pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article announces that the 2022 grand prize winner in the American College of Rheumatology (ACR) Annual Image Competition is a series of images showing localized scleroderma in a 12-year-old girl that was later diagnosed as Parry Romberg syndrome.

However, as stated in our study limitations, we did not collect information on gout symptoms after allopurinol was stopped and we are unable to comment on the effect of serum uric acid levels or urate-lowering treatment on symptom burden. Keywords: ESRD; gout; hemodialysis; uric acid EN ESRD gout hemodialysis uric acid 585 585 1 03/06/23 20230301 NES 230301 We thank Tsai et al[1] for their comments and interest in our article.[2] In response, 8 out of 10 patients were exclusively on allopurinol, 1 patient was switched from pegloticase to allopurinol 4 years prior to the initiation of hemodialysis (HD) and 1 patient was on both febuxostat and allopurinol which were discontinued within 1 year of HD initiation. [Extracted from the article]

Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflict of interest.