Powering LifeGift's mission of hope with Adobe Acrobat Sign

LifeGift, a non-profit health services organization, plays a vital role in the complex, highly regulated, life-saving world of organ donations. To ensure the seamless and secure orchestration of organ gifts, they needed to find a way to make their document processes more seamless. The solution needed to handle electronic signatures and provide robust security for sensitive medical information. After exploring several options, LifeGift chose Adobe Acrobat Sign because it was exceptionally easy to use and provided outstanding security and integration features.

Investing in Adobe for greater efficiency and security

Prior to adopting Acrobat Sign, LifeGift relied upon a heavily manual process, but the urgency of obtaining signatures in the operating room along with the need to streamline the intensive onboarding of employees pointed toward the need for a universal, secure, and easy-to-use electronic signature solution.

After extensive online research and comparison, LifeGift’s IT department recommended that they move forward with Acrobat Sign due to its robust security features.

“Legally, we are responsible for all patient information, so we must be sensitive to security concerns. That led us to investing only when we have confidence in the security.” says Lynn Onken, director of Performance Improvement at LifeGift.

The improved capabilities of Acrobat Sign, including the automation of creating and routing forms used for onboarding, brought significant efficiency improvements to the organization. About a quarter of their 400-person workforce — including most of their leadership and management — now use Acrobat Sign, and the impact has been significant. Add this to the organization’s use of Adobe Acrobat and they have a complete digital document solution that is helping them achieve unprecedented efficiency.

Facilitating onboarding for faster hospital access

LifeGift's team members are tasked with securing organ donations at multiple hospitals across one of three regions in the United States: North, Southeast, and West Texas. In order to get badges and access to every hospital in their respective region, new LifeGift team members have to complete a packet of onboarding paperwork specific to that region, all of which requires signatures from staff as well as hospital security. With more than 200 hospital partners, getting this paperwork prepared, routed, and signed manually took weeks to complete and previously required a dedicated full-time admin position just for paperwork routing. This person can now complete the job more efficiently and timely, removing the manual part of the process and allowing for additional clinical employee growth.

Acrobat Sign has significantly simplified and sped up this process, allowing LifeGift to prefill onboarding paperwork and collect signatures for team members to ensure they have been vetted by each hospital they may need to visit to arrange organ donations. Average time is takes to complete the paperwork for all regions, for example the North region whose packet was the largest, has been reduced by 90 percent, allowing new team members to get into hospitals faster and focus on the time-critical organ donation process. Administrative staff time has also been significantly reduced, giving them back time to spend on other mission-critical projects.

Integrations and expansions

Jamila Nevels, Quality/Process Improvement Coordinator at LifeGift, says, “We use Acrobat Sign as much as possible, so any time we can simplify a process by including Acrobat Sign, we work it in there.” As an example, LifeGift is leveraging Acrobat Sign's integration with Microsoft SharePoint via the Power Automate API, making document storage and access even simpler. Prior to the integration, the paperwork did not allow for tracking where employees were in the process or provide access to the employee information. Now, says Onken, “Everything gets automatically and accurately put in the right place after it is signed.”

LifeGift has expanded its Acrobat Sign usage to a now automated reimbursement process and is working to automate training completion certification. Finally, LifeGift uses Acrobat Sign for auditing purposes as their audit reports require sign-off from leadership prior to dissemination. Acrobat Sign’s security features ensure patient records are kept confidential during all processes, helping LifeGift maintain compliance with HIPAA, FDA, and CMS (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) regulations. Acrobat Sign has been instrumental in helping LifeGift meet these strict requirements, providing them with an additional layer of confidence and security.

Empowering through enhanced efficiency

Overall, Acrobat Sign helps LifeGift streamline its operations, enhance security, and increase efficiency across the board. Ultimately, these benefits enable the organization to fulfill its mission, which Onken describes as: “We offer hope, that is our mission.” The transformation Acrobat Sign has brought to LifeGift is a testament to the powerful impact digital tools can have on even the most sensitive and complex of missions.