[Balance Acceptability Range]

Sorry for the late response! The scale is used solely for weighing the output of therapeutic phlebotomies, in which blood is wasted immediately following the procedure. The only claim the manufacturer makes for readings is that the repeatability (or standard deviation) should be 1g, otherwise no guidance is provided.

 

Based on y'all's responses, it doesn't seem necessary to tighten the range at all. I think it makes sense to keep the range wider to watch for drift, especially because therapeutic phlebotomies don't require much precision.

[Balance Acceptability Range]

The acceptability range for our both of our scale balances (200 g and 500 g) when weighed during day of use scale QC is ±5 g. I didn't set this range, and I'm not sure how it was determined, but one of the techs would really like the range readjusted. I agree with them that it's probably best practice to create a more stringent range, but I'm not sure where to start.

The scale we're using only measures in one gram intervals with a maximum range of 1 kg (it's an Ohaus CR2200), so a lot of what I've read about weight range determination will be difficult to implement. It also seems like a good bit of the advice pertains more to weight calibration, which our facilities outsources.

I hope y'all have some insight for me! Maybe I'm overthinking this whole situation.

[Emergency Release Procedures]

Hi John, it's a stand alone surgery center. Unfortunately, our pathologist isn't sure why we have two procedures, the separate CLIA numbers were his best guess. After speaking with a couple of other long time employees, I think it had to do with that surgery center not originally being owned by the hospital. I'm thinking that I'll just add a line about servicing outpatient facilities into the original emergency release procedure and retire the other one.

Kelly, thanks for your response! That makes some sense, I haven't run into a situation like that before.

[Emergency Release Procedures]

I recently took over as the blood bank supervisor, and I'm trying to consolidate some of our procedures. We currently have two procedures for emergency releasing blood, one for inpatients and one for the outpatient surgery center. I told my pathologist that I'd like to retire the outpatient surgery procedure, as it is still the same process and doesn't provide any additional information, but he thinks we might need it because the outpatient surgery center has a different CLIA number. I've never heard of this, do y'all have any idea what he could be referring to?