The University of Kansas Health System has grown from its beginnings as a university hospital in the early 1900s to span over 100 locations across the state with more 14,000 employees and 1,000 physicians earning national accolades and leading in areas like telehealth.

A pivotal transformation occurred when The University of Kansas Hospital in Kansas City became an independent hospital authority with autonomy from the university and state in 1998, opening the door for transformative advancements in facilities, care, and growth across Kansas.

“We’re the elite institution in the area now, ranked as the Best Hospital in Kansas City and the Best Hospital in Kansas by U.S. News & World Report for 13 consecutive years. And it’s absolutely the best place to work,” said Director of Development Operations Marcella Jewell. “That’s what’s especially meaningful to me, because I grew up here.”

Finding Fundraising Solutions that Work

Jewell understands how important fundraising is to the continued success
of The University of Kansas Health System and was recently promoted after
serving as data and insights manager for fund development for several years.
While the health system had ownership of fundraising for clinical patient care
and the university focused on supporting the medical school and research
since the 1998 separation, the university endowment continued to process
health system gifts until 2014. That’s when the health system adopted
Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge as its CRM, upgrading to Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge
NXT within a couple of years. This allowed the health system to process and
acknowledge gifts more effectively, setting the stage for a multi-year capital
campaign that overshot its original goal of $100 million by $28 million.
Yet a “rudimentary” attempt by the health system to create a grateful patient
fundraising program without expert support fell flat during the same period,
Jewell explained, leading the development team to look to Blackbaud’s
Grateful Patient Solution—including Blackbaud’s ResearchPoint and access to
Blackbaud’s strategic consultants—for the tools they needed to really make
it work.

Powered by Blackbaud solutions, The University of Kansas Health System’s
reimagined grateful patient fundraising initiative was implemented in 2019,
yielding more than 1,200 new patient prospects in the first three years. A single
grateful patient alone committed to $1.1 million planned giving in the third year,
according to Jewell, who leads the initiative for the health system. “We don’t
have an unlimited number of companies that we can funnel to you,” Jewell
remembered explaining to her department, “but we can get you new patient
prospects every single day.”

The successes have boosted interest in grateful patient fundraising from major
gift officers, departmental leaders, and the health system’s vice presidents—as
well as clinical service leaders and physicians seeking funding for their areas
and projects. “Everyone wants to take it and run with it,” Jewell said.
As a result, the health system shifted staffing from corporate giving and by
2023 had created three front-line, development-director-level positions to
focus on grateful patient fundraising. “Our success in re-launching our grateful
patient program with Blackbaud’s Grateful Patient Solution and the guidance
of our Blackbaud consultant—both in terms of patient prospects identified and
dollars raised—prompted our leadership to expand the team of development
directors focused on this area,” Jewell said.

Blackbaud Principal Strategic Consultant Carol Belair has advised the health
system since the beginning of the new initiative. “The University of Kansas
Health System has benefited from a shared dedication by everyone involved
to move quickly as they implement Blackbaud’s Grateful Patient Solution in
dynamic ways,” Belair said. “The health system has also benefited from having
Marcella at the helm, leading this work. She trusts in data and has championed
the creation of a consistent and effective process.”

Making Grateful Patient Fundraising Sustainable

Before Jewell and Blackbaud became involved, the health system’s grateful
patient fundraising efforts rested with a prospect researcher sifting through
spreadsheets of inpatients, mostly looking at zip codes and trying to pinpoint
already existing donors to suggest to gift officers for rounding visits. The
setup was piecemeal, without a clear process or infrastructure in place, and
it “crumbled” when the prospect researcher moved on, Jewell said. “What
we’ve built out now with Blackbaud’s Grateful Patient Solution is sustainable,”
she said. Even if Jewell or other key players left, the team would have a clear
process and record system in place so they could continue.
Here’s how The University of Kansas Health System’s current HIPAA-compliant
grateful patient process works with Blackbaud solutions in place:

• Every day the health system’s Business Intelligence team automatically
provides a filtered report of hospital inpatients that Blackbaud’s Grateful
Patient Solution pre-screens for wealth, philanthropic activity and income,
creating a list of high-potential prospects for further screening.

• Thanks to ResearchPoint—Blackbaud’s dedicated software for prospect
research and management—patient prospect profiles are further screened
and segmented for giving potential and propensity twice a week by
the prospect research manager, with information securely stored in
ResearchPoint with encrypted fields for HIPAA-compliant fundraising data.

• Information from ResearchPoint for grateful patient prospects is easily
synced with the health system’s integrated Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT
database to assign a solicitor, set prospect status, record research notes,
and provide major gift officers the ability to document actions.

• From each batch, Jewell’s team provides a short list of grateful patient
prospects to major gift officers who reach out within two weeks of a
patient’s successful discharge.

• The team puts a note on the Raiser’s Edge NXT constituent record with any
relevant research—such as spouse, children, business—and very brief broad
HIPAA-allowed patient data—such as department and physician. They also
do a comprehensive screening with Blackbaud’s WealthPoint®—which
identifies publicly available prospect research data—and sync
the ResearchPoint and Raiser’s Edge NXT records so estimated wealth,
capacity, assets, etc. show in the prospect management section of Raiser’s
Edge NXT.

Working Together to Identify Significant Funding

The University of Kansas Health System’s grateful patient process has
benefited from Blackbaud’s consulting services including guidance by Belair
for setting wealth and affluence pre-screening levels that made sense for the
health system and its constituents. “In launching the Grateful Patient Solution
project, we relied heavily on our Blackbaud consultant for her expertise,”
Jewell said.

Jewell has also built and nurtured internal alliances along the way with HIPAA
and cyber-security officials and the business intelligence specialists who
made automated inpatient reporting possible. Everyone can feel confident
that the process is secure, reliable, and follows the guidelines for screening
and storing HIPAA-compliant patient constituent data.

Gift officers recognize the value of the grateful patient leads they receive
from Jewell’s team and feel confident about cultivating those prospects with
the personal calls and meetings that continue to play a critical role in securing
major gifts. “Good data management made the data more accessible so that
analysts could focus on the research process, and the major gift officers could
focus on relationships,” Jewell said. “Together we’ve been able to identify
significant funding to benefit the entire health system.”