We instituted the practice of retyping the patients if their histories could not be proven. To do so, we instituted the practice of performing the retypes on a different specimen collected at a different time within the previous 24 hrs or within 1 hr of the blood type verification in the LIS. The histories are checked on every patient in the blood bank, if they do not have a historical type, the phlebotomist is sent to the patient room to collect a new lavender top tube. It does not matter the type of the patient, if they have no history, they get retyped. This practice ties into CAP TRM.30575. We have actually "caught" incorrect collections by the RN's that collected the incorrect patient and labeled the specimen with the wrong patient information.
This is our practice and we are sticking to it!
The other Scott