Best Practice for Noting Patient Service Line in RE

Adrienne Barton

Would love to learn what policies and how other healthcare organizations are noting and tracking service line / department services received information for prospects/donors in Raiser's Edge.

Do you only document when self-disclosed by donor and word in such a way that it clearly states that the donor self-disclosed the information?

Do you have a coding system?

Would appreciate any insights. Thank you!

Dariel Dixon

Generally speaking, we don't. We don't track any patient data at all, just to make sure there is no potential violations.

I would be in contact with your risk management team or legal department to see if this is something worth doing. Not all the data in RE is encrypted, so we have made the decision to not add any data that is sensitive at all.

Karen Diener

Completely agree with @Dariel Dixon. It has been a few year since I've been in a hospital setting, but we were VERY cautious about this information. It generally does not belong in your donor database.

The only thing we tracked was an arbitrary ID number in the SSN field. That ID number tied them to a shadow database of patient guarantor data, which was very vague.

If someone disclosed details of their visit during a donor meeting, phone call, email, etc., that information was recorded since gift officers were adding their actions. The key is that it was disclosed by the donor - that is the only way we would add that level of detail.

Karen

Julie Hiland

As the fundraising entities FOR our healthcare systems, there are pieces of data you are “allowed” to have access to and use for fundraising purposes. There is a list of what these are, which I'm sure you've seen. (If not, ask your legal department.) We record physician name as a relationship (especially if the patient was referred to us BY that physician, or if the patient expresses gratitude for that physician) and we add “Patient Engagement” actions when our fundraising team interacts with a patient (especially when they are inpatient and we are paying a visit to their room). But no health details!