She co-founded Imagine Pediatrics, a value-based care company that serves nearly 100,000 children on Medicaid. She sits on advisory boards for multiple early-stage digital health companies and partners with venture funds and operators on clinical strategy and physician-led innovation. She still works shifts in the pediatric ER — the source of every idea she builds today.
As a female physician founder, she hopes her story inspires other women physicians considering this path. She partners with the full community of physicians ready to expand the reach of their clinical work.
I became a pediatric emergency physician because of the opportunity to support kids and families with the full range of concerns they bring, from the small worries to the life-threatening ones.
Some of my favorite parts of the job are the simple ones. I get to tell a mom she is doing a great job, help a child feel better and heal, and sit with a family through a hard conversation. Then come the high-stakes moments, when my team and I change the trajectory of a child’s life. That is the most meaningful work I can imagine, and it is still the reason I keep working clinical shifts.
Early in my career, I realized that our healthcare system is broken in ways no single shift in the ER can fix. So many of the children I see arrive because of upstream issues, and many families do not get the care they need or deserve. I have always wanted to find ways to make a bigger impact — a systems impact — and to help solve the root problems for the kids and families I serve.
The biggest surprise was how little medical training prepares you to address the upstream problems you see every day in the clinical setting. You learn how to care for the patient in front of you, but not how to build the systems and solutions that would have kept her out of the ER in the first place.
Once I saw that gap, I could not unsee it. I did not set out to build a path for other physicians. I built one for myself, following a vision of better care for children with special needs, and that work eventually became Imagine Pediatrics — a value-based care company that today serves nearly 100,000 children on Medicaid.
What I learned along the way is how much impact physicians can have when we scale our clinical expertise. Other people paved the way for me, and I now take a supportive role to help other physicians achieve that same kind of impact. That is the work I do today through Startup Physicians.
Impact at scale. I love when physicians take their clinical expertise and translate it into solutions that reach far more patients than any one of us could see in a lifetime of clinical practice.
Mission alignment above all. The advisor seats, board seats, and investments I take are the ones that genuinely change care for patients and families.
Continuity with clinical work. I still work shifts in the pediatric ER. Every good idea I’ve had came from the bedside, and I do not want to lose that signal.
A life and career designed on purpose. I have four children, and I have built a career that fits my life rather than the other way around. That has shaped how I show up for my work, my family, and the physicians I support.
Creating pathways for access. Other mentors opened doors for me, and I now spend much of my time doing the same for others. My vision is to create opportunities for other physicians to have impact at scale.
The advice I would give is that your clinical voice matters at every level of healthcare — not only at the bedside. The frustrations you carry about the system are signals about what needs to change, and your insight into how care works is what is missing from many of the conversations that shape the future of healthcare.
You do not have to leave clinical medicine to do this work. Real paths exist into advising, investing, founding, and serving on boards, and they are open to physicians who want to expand the reach of what they already do well. The hardest part is to recognize that you have something valuable to offer outside the exam room. Once you see that clearly, the rest comes down to the right partners, the right opportunities, and the right pace for your life.
I am living proof that this work and a clinical career can coexist, and I hope more women physicians find that path.
I would love to hear from physicians thinking about this work, founders building in healthcare, and operators looking for clinical perspective.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alison-curfman-md-mba/ is where I am most active.
Advisory firm: www.AlisonCurfmanMD.com is for my work with venture funds, operators, and digital health companies.
Startup Physicians: www.StartupPhysicians.com is the platform for physicians ready to expand their impact through advising, consulting, and founding.