Rita5362

We also require a licensed nurse to accompany a patient receiving a transfusion.

We just used Software Testing Solutions. It was a great time saver and I was very pleased with their testing and reports. I am due an AABB inspection any minute so I have not been inspected since we used this. I did a validation of their validation and then used it to help validate for an upgrade. I still had to work on the different test plans but they did the general plan and it was wonderful. With staffing cuts, I do not know how I would have accomplished this. All of the blood bank maintenance and testing is performed by either the blood bank supervisor or one of the blood bank staff. Neither the LIS coordinator nor IT does any of the blood bank LIS troubleshooting, maintenance or testing. Therefore, it was a great help to me (the blood bank supervisor). The thing that acutally swayed us into buying this software was an unexpected absence of several months of the primary person who knew the system (the blood bank supervisor)and did the maintanance just after a major upgrade to GUI. It was noted at that time that the staff who was left would not have been able to handle the blood bank workload plus the time involved in a major upgrade and the system was obtained.

I too was upset over the price increase for Immucor. I use Ortho gel for antibody screening and antibody identification and Ortho traditional reagents for ABO and Rh. Therefore, I felt that I could set up a minimum with Immucor for the traditional reagents for ABO and Rh and at least one set of screening cells per month and not have to pay list price. I was told by my Immucor rep that she has been told by her superiors that the only way I could get anything other than list was to change from gel technology. I am not willing to do this unless I am able to later automate (it has been denied for the past 5 years) and would consider either Ortho or Immucor at that time.