Blue Jay CollaborativePatient Services Consulting
Meet the founder

Katie Schoeppner, MSW, LICSW

Founder & Principal of Blue Jay Collaborative. Clinician first, executive second — always patient-centered.

About Katie

Clinician first, executive second — always patient-centered.

Katie brings 18 years in healthcare to Blue Jay Collaborative: five as a clinical social worker in the University of Minnesota Adult Blood and Marrow Transplant Program, then 12 years of progressive leadership at NMDP (Be The Match), most recently as Senior Director of Patient Services.

She has walked alongside patients and caregivers facing transplant and life-threatening illness, and she has led national programs serving more than 18,000 patients a year. Blue Jay Collaborative brings both views — the bedside and the boardroom — to the organizations she works with.

Credentials & experience

Depth at the bedside. Scale in the boardroom.

Clinical depth

Active LICSW; years of direct practice with patients and caregivers facing transplant and life-threatening illness.

Executive scale

Led a 35-person national team and a multi-million-dollar annual budget, more than half of which was government and philanthropic funding

Builder

Built NMDP’s Survivorship Program from the ground up; co-led a PCORI-funded caregiver project.

National voice

Former Chair, ASTCT Social Work SIG; published in Transplantation and Cellular Therapy; presenter at Tandem, AOSW and One Forum.

Career path

18 years in healthcare

From direct clinical practice to national leadership — and now helping organizations put patients at the center of strategy.

Now

Founder & Principal, Blue Jay Collaborative

Patient services consulting for pharma, biotech and healthcare organizations.

12 years

NMDP (Be The Match)

Progressive leadership, most recently Senior Director of Patient Services — leading navigation, financial assistance, education, peer support, survivorship and clinical trial support.

5 years

University of Minnesota

Clinical social worker in the Adult Blood and Marrow Transplant Program.

PROOF POINTS FROM PROGRAMS KATIE LED AT NMDP

Patient support that moves the needle

more likely to receive a transplant
0 %

Multivariate analysis showed the effectiveness of the Patient Support Center on patient access

patients served annually
0 +

Navigation, financial assistance, education, peer support, survivorship and clinical trial support

in patient financial assistance
$ 0 M

Grants distributed to reduce financial barriers to transplant

survivorship patients enrolled
0 +

25% ethnically diverse; care plans scaled from a 6-center pilot to any transplant center

Equity by design: Utilized machine-learning to assess patient risk and focused outreach on patients least likely to access treatment

Patient support should not be ancillary to strategy. It should drive it.

Katie Schoeppner · Founder & Principal

Why the name honors my father

Blue Jay honors my late father, Dr. JP Carlson — a hematologist/oncologist whose patient-first philosophy grounded this work.

Want to work together?

Let’s talk about your patients, your program and your goals.
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