Records Retention

[bbbirder]

How long do you keep your panel sheets from antibodies you have ID'd?

I know that a record of the antibody must be kept forever. I assume that means the interpretation. What about the actual panel sheets?

Thanks

[bevydawn]

We keep ours indefinitely. I keep the last couple of years in a filing cabinet in the Blood Bank and when I clean them out, the older ones go in files in the basement of our hospital. I dont know if I could handle the dust to ever clean those in the basement out!

[donellda]

We keep ours indefinately also. We make an antibody summary sheet for all clinically significant antibodies so that we can record reaction strengths each time we get a new specimen (our LIS system purges results fairly fast since we are such a big health system). We attach our panel work to the summary sheet.

[Cliff]

We too keep all of our paper records indefinitely. Currently have a home grown system, and do not purge records. We are moving to Mediware this year, I doubt we will purge from that either. Once we move to Mediware we'll have fewer paper records, as we don't currently have direct entry or electronic crossmatch. We are a large facility.

[Sandy Jo]

I brought up the question of retention of Antibody Panel sheets (after the patient has expired) to AABB. The response was that there is no requirement to keep the panel sheets indefinetely, just the record of the antibody. As far as the panel sheets, the response was to define in your facility as appropriate to your record retention policies. At our facility, we are still going to keep the antibody panel sheets, but review annually with a Social Security Death Index Search for patients that have expired, and retain in a separate file for five years after death.

Sandy (South Bay Hospital, Sun City Center, Florida)

[John C. Staley]

I keep our old panel sheets for 5 years from the last time we worked up the patient. This was from the direction of out QA group.

[David Saikin]

I keep the panel sheet attached to the workup(s) . . . haven't had the nerve to cull any.

[bmarotto]

I had been keeping panel sheets indefinitely. Due to on-site space issues and the need to cut offsite storage costs, we recently were forced to cut back to saving only the past ten years. All interpretations are in our computer system and never purged.

[safars]

AABB Standards say "patient testing to detect unexpected antibodies to red cell antigens" must be kept for 5 years, so we keep our paper panel workups for that long. We keep two years on site (to cover the time since our last CAP and AABB inspections) and send the others off site.

[bbbirder]

Thanks for everyone's replies. I am going to go with a minimum of 5 years. I may keep some longer if storage space allows.

[adiescast]

I asked AABB about this issue. They confirmed that the retention requirement was only for the record of the antibody or problem, not for the paper or electronic record of the workup. We had been keeping our paper records indefinitely, but I plan to reduce that to 5 years (or whatever I can keep on-site). The only reason I am keeping the paper that long is that we do have patients come back and it is helpful to see what the workup was like - particularly if it was unusual.