Has anyone else received word of yet another Immucor price increase effective January?

I've not heard anything but I have a meeting with my sales rep next week. Maybe I'll find out more then. What I'm really hoping to learn about is their new Echo (Galileo jr.). My ABS2000 is about worn out and I can't wait to get the new one.

For some reason we can only get 1 vial of anti-Kell every 3 months from Immucor. That is ridiculous. They need to get some swift competition in there soon.

Well gang it's not just Immucor rasing their prices. I just received my letter from Ortho informing me of their plan to "moderately increase pricing" as well. I must admit I'm not surprised. Actually would have been surprised if they had NOT increased their prices.

We just got our letter from Immucor notifying us of the increases. The average increase was 24%. For ABO reagents it was 32% and for other reagents it was as much as 48%. How much was Ortho's price increase.

Isn't there anyone else out there worried that we have only two suppliers for blood bank reagents? What we pay for reagents is insignificant compared to what would happen if one of them had trouble producing, and I mean to our hospital operations. We cannot purchase from outside the country, we cannot produce this stuff ourselves, and much of it we cannot stockpile. I only hope they become so robust that some other manufacturer decides it a good business to get into! I am sorry the price increases wrecked your budget, mine too, but let's think in the long term.

I'm curious, what do you think we can do about it? Besides worry that is.

Co-op and produce our own? Maybe, but in the regulatory enviroment we now live in, unlikely. The low business volume is what put the others out of business in the first place. I just hope we can keep what we have and don't get down to only 1. Apparently Olympus is trying on a very limited scale but I haven't seen much on the horrizon to indicate anyone else coming out especially with the advent of automation. Use a company's equipment you must use their reagents, why would anyone else want to get involved? If someone can see any silver linings to these clouds I sure hope they share them becasue I don't so I just try to pad my budget as best I can guess. Another thought for you is, reagents are the least of our expenses, have you looked at your blood bill lately!!