Does anyone use RBC expiration rate for their monthly quality indicators (key performance indicators)? If so, what do you use as your denominator? Do you use number of RBCs transfused in the month or the the number of RBCs received from your blood supplier per month? We use number of RBCs received from our blood supplier as we wanted to monitor we don`t excessively order blood that may not be used and expire. But now I have read that this may not be correct.  Also, what is your target? We state our expiration rate should be <2%.

I have always used total number of outgoing RBC's for that month, used + wasted. The issue with using the number received is that some months you may receive a large quantity for that month but due to expiry they wont expire till the following month where your received stock may be less than the month before hence this will skew the figures giving a higher % waste for this month.  Using total outgoing RBC's gives a better indication of the waste against use for each particular month. 

My previous lab had a stats program built in that was based on MHRA and UK BSMS requirements and this always reported waste as a % of total outgoing RBC's. 

 

Steve

I document as a % of units w final disposition that month.

On 3/18/2019 at 10:07 AM, David Saikin said:

I document as a % of units w final disposition that month.

Same - we report the number and a %

We use crossmatched/transfused ratio  for our blood utilization committee,  we also keep track for each deparment (ortho, OB/GYN etc. but we cycle our rbc stock, we return rbc units to American red cross that meet a certain exp cut off date, and we order units to maintain optimum inventory. this happens weekly. if we dip below our minimum inventory we order more product in addition to our weeky order.