longmt

500+ Teaching Hospital (multi-organ Transplants) in the Nations Capital and have used 5-day thawed Plasma for over 5 years. After switching to 5-day thawed plasma wastage dropped from 40 units per month to about 2 per month.

Over two years ago following a JACHO review the Blood Bank was appointed caretaker of the Tissue products. We set it up so the Surgical staff orders what they want and have the items shipped directly to the blood bank. We receive them in to the Blood Bank LIS and issue them out to the specific patient when requested. The Surgical staff is responcible for billing for each tissue used. All tissue received are from approved licensed suppliers. We have one individual that over sees the tissue bank activities and all blood bank staff handle receiving and issuing product. This process required an additional FTE in the blood bank.

The facility that I work at has used two ABS2000 for over 5-years and have found them to be like having two extra techs that just do types and screens for the blood bank 24/7 (minus one hour each day for QC). It is great to have this type of automation available. The Capture system is more sensitive, we've found antibodies sooner as newly developing and antibodies in patients at lower levels that would have been missed by the tube method. This has helped in reducing our over all transfusion reaction investigations. We a currently looking to the Galileo to increase our throughput and expand testing capabilities.