Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago increased documented interprofessional consultations from an average of 0.9 per week to more than 40 per week after launching a hospitalwide program to capture and bill for informal “curbside” consults, according to a study published July 27 in JAMA Pediatrics.
Researchers ran five rounds of interventions between March and July 2025, using CPT codes the American Medical Association created in 2019 to reimburse patient care advice from clinicians who do not see the patient face to face. The steps included setting an expectation that infectious diseases providers stop performing undocumented curbside consults for eligible questions, releasing a documentation template to all providers, holding division-level workshops to customize those templates, coaching faculty at division meetings and adding an attestation phrase that let trainees participate.
Face-to-face consultations did not decline during the study period, and interprofessional consult volume rose as new trainees arrived for the academic year.
Among the first 1,000 postintervention consults, 42.2% originated in acute care, 22.1% in the emergency department and 11.1% in the pediatric intensive care unit. Infectious diseases (26.3%), pulmonology (18%), wound care (13.1%) and endocrinology (10.4%) were the heaviest users.
“With that documentation, you’re not relying on a game of telephone,” lead author Caitlin Li, MD, assistant professor of pediatrics in the division of infectious diseases at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, said in an Aug. 12 news release. “Curbside consultations as a concept in medicine aren’t going away anytime soon. This is a much safer way to approach situations when a provider needs to ask a specialist but a face-to-face visit isn’t practical or possible.”
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