The recent AHP International Conference in Orlando featured a wide variety of informative sessions on healthcare philanthropy topics, but a few themes emerged. One was the interest in, and challenges of, building and sustaining a successful grateful patient program. Here are a few of the insights that came out of these sessions for you to take back to your own program, no matter where you are on the implementation spectrum.
Treat Your Physician Partnerships Like a Second Portfolio
When building relationships with physicians to support your grateful patient program, it helps to view them as a portfolio in the same way you do with potential donors. At Tampa General Hospital, this means starting with discovery: 30-minute monthly meetings with likely candidates identified by the medical director to get to know the doctors’ interests, explain the science of gratitude, and build trust. Vic Teschel, senior director of development, combines formal meetings with visits to the clinics to get to know the physicians more casually and see them in their day-to-day environment. Cultivation means doubling down on those physicians who show interest and revising outreach strategies to the ones who remain more elusive. Stewardship means celebrating each gift—especially first gifts, no matter the size. Just like with donors, these celebrations serve a dual purpose. They show gratitude to the physicians who made the successful referral, and they cultivate the rest of the physician team to set up the next one.
Three Years Is the Tipping Point for Physician Relationships
Also like your donor portfolio, building strong relationships takes time. Though it’s by no means scientific, many speakers mentioned that the process to build a fruitful relationship with a physician takes about three years. It’s a big commitment, but it’s a necessary step for success: trust comes before referrals, and it takes time to build that trust.
Make It Easy for Nurses to Refer Grateful Patients
The foundation team at Hackensack Meridian Health has been focusing on nurse involvement in identifying grateful patients since 2021. Through the Nurse Philanthropy Councils, they have identified nursing strategic priorities to support with philanthropic dollars, educated nurses to understand the role of giving back in a patient’s healing process, provided scripting and patient materials, and set referral goals. But it was the launch of a grateful patient referral button in their Epic system in the summer of 2022 that turned the program into a well-oiled machine. Information about the patient is automatically pulled into a staff message in Epic. The nurse simply adds a note about the patient’s expression of gratitude and clicks send forward the message to the foundation team. In 2022, the foundation team received about 250 referrals in the entire year. Since the adoption of the Epic referral button, that number has increased 10 times; the foundation has received 2,500 in 2023—and the year isn’t even over yet.
Trust in Your Own Expertise
Sitting across the table from a world-renowned cardiac surgeon can be intimidating. But just as you wouldn’t go into the operating room and tell that surgeon what kind of cut to use, they should defer to your knowledge about how to cultivate a potential donor. You are the subject matter expert on development. Lindsey Knarzer, senior director of development at Tampa General Hospital, counsels to keep this in mind in meetings with physician partners. It’s ok for physicians to have opinions, of course, but ultimately, they should trust you to do what is best. If they overstep, don’t be afraid to speak up. As Lindsey’s colleague, Taylor Baker, CFRE, likes to say, “Being assertive isn’t disrespectful. It’s respect earning.”
Build a Data-Driven Qualification Program
Sami Mouth, director of prospect and systems management, and Matt Valenzuela, principal prospect and systems analyst, from the South Division at Providence have developed a HIPAA-compliant process for using patient data to qualify potential grateful patients. They use a combination of wealth screening, encounter information, and giving history to create prioritized lists that gift officers can pull directly to review with their physician partners. The lists contain contact information and the referring physician, but no other encounter information, alleviating privacy concerns.
When the program was launched, the influx of large numbers of potential prospects was overwhelming to some gift officers. To support her staff to make the most of the newfound information, Grace Casian, senior director of philanthropy at Providence St. Jude Memorial Foundation, conducted cold-calling training. She now runs a weekly “Qualathon” where her team spends 45 minutes researching and calling individuals on the list—thanking them for their last gift, no matter how small, if there is no other obvious conversation starter in the data they are given—and 15 minutes reporting out to the rest of the team on progress.
Get Non-Clinicians Involved with a Personal Leadership Lunch
Tanya Cole is currently a principal strategic consultant at Blackbaud, but previously she worked in donor relations at a foundation in Minnesota, where she arranged weekly lunches with the hospital president and promising grateful patients. Each Thursday, the president hosted up to four patients and the foundation president for a discussion of the hospital’s strategic priorities. Because the lunch dates were a recurring occurrence on the president’s calendar, it became an efficient process to administer. Tanya sent emails to prospective attendees on the president’s behalf to schedule a date and provided the executive assistant with an attendee roster and notes about each attendee’s interests before each lunch. Having the regular appointment on the calendar made it a useful and easy to arrange perk to offer prospective grateful patient donors.