Department & care
Requests for expert opinion and patient pathways
Requests for opinion, referrals, multidisciplinary meetings: a clear circuit, response templates and follow-up, without ever circulating identifying data.
The problem
An expert centre receives requests for opinion, referrals and incidental findings to confirm every day, by email, phone or letter. On top of that come multidisciplinary team meetings and specific pathways (screening, rare disease). Everything relies on the senior physician’s memory.
Step-by-step method
- Map the inputs: who refers, through which channel, for which type of request.
- Define the pathway for each type: clinic appointment, day hospital, investigation, multidisciplinary meeting, written opinion.
- Response templates (with no patient data): acknowledgement of receipt, triage, list of investigations to arrange.
- A pseudonymised tracking table kept in the institution’s own tool: date, type, triage, status. The AI helps design the table and the templates, not store patients in them.
- Prepare multidisciplinary meetings: agenda, presentation format, standard minutes.
- List the department’s recurring staff meetings and conferences: frequency, attendees, useful building block (talk, clinical case).
Deliverable
A written pathway for each type of request, response templates, and a tracking table designed once.
Safeguards
Patient data stay in the medical record and in the tools authorised by the institution. The AI works on templates and processes, never on named patient records.
Starter prompt
Here are the types of requests for opinion my unit receives and the possible pathways. Propose a triage flowchart, three response templates with no patient data, and the columns of a pseudonymised tracking table.