Curbside Consultation - an informal discussion between two healthcare professionals.
CURBSIDETM is a method of engineering an efficient process to find and connect with qualified medical professionals for consultation purposes.
The power of a curbside consultation is its efficiency - this is why it is leveraged more than any other method by practicing physicians. However, curbsides do not scale digitally, nor do they withstand the rigor of compliance or legal standards.
The CURBSIDETM methodology establishes standards for engineering the similar, functional efficiency of a curbside consult but at scale; it is also friendly to practicing medical professionals while meeting security, compliance, and defensibility criteria.
Why Does This Matter?
Receiving the most informative guidance at the right time helps drive better decision-making. With better information in less time, you can substantially impact patient care, physician performance, human resources, harm event response, new product or technology testing, claim lifecycles, and much more.
So, why hasn't anyone aggregated an exchange of the best minds in medicine? Under the old ways of doing things, the time and cost requirements are prohibitive.
Other barriers include:
Who Could Use the CURBSIDETM Methodology?
Any organization that relies on and leverages medical expert consultations can benefit from the CURBSIDETM methodology. Here is an example:
Core Tenets
The best consultations come from currently practicing experts in their respective specialties. Look for board-certified physicians, NPs, and other care providers working at a busy practice.
How can you access these individuals? Engineer the proposed interaction to eliminate virtually all non-consultative burdens on the experts.
Examples of non-consultative activities include:
There's also a hidden burden - all the clicks, tasks, and communication activities required to perform workflow steps in the interaction. The tedious tasks can drive away high-quality experts from engaging in reviews or other work you need. Lower the overhead for your experts, and you will attract the best.
You can also create opportunities for asynchronous and multimodal communication.
Examples of multimodal communication include:
Examples of multimodal technology options:
These are important because busy experts require a choice of communication methods to accommodate unpredictable circumstances and schedules.
2 Identify, codify, and engage experts before they are needed.
Half of the challenge of seeking the best advice at the right time is identifying and onboarding the specialist to whatever transmission platform they will use when and if the time comes to consult.
How can you solve this challenge? The solution is to build a database, platform, or process that effectively codifies a particular expert for their specialty and subspecialty at a minimum. It should also include other more nuanced signals that indicate what the expert is qualified (or more skilled or trained) to provide.
It's crucial to leverage the latest technology to streamline expert onboarding and eliminate any extra steps to solicit advice from your experts.
3 Operationalize CURBSIDETM methods into your ongoing system design improvement
Enhance the effectiveness of your new or existing exchange or process and reduce overhead by designing them through the CURBSIDETM elements.
What Are the Elements of CURBSIDETM?
[C]uration, Classification, and Rating
[U]ser Experience Design, and Automation
[R]ecruitment and Onboarding
[B]uilt-in Frameworks
[S]ecurity and Compliance
[I]ntelligent Matching
[D]ata Routing and Optimization
[E]nrichment and Analysis