Price Increases

[cmiller]

Ortho's price increase went into effect 3-10-08. All traditional reagents increased 100% and the gel red cell reagents increased 10%.

We currently do everything in tube, but are in the process of getting gel to implement later this year. So these price increaes are going to kill our budget...

It looks like everyone is jumping on the "automation" band wagon!

Good luck to us all.

[Abdulhameed Al-Attas]

yes,I agree,while it must contain all that the Anti-D contains exept the Anti-D, The important thing is the 22 to 30% Albumin.

[Abdulhameed Al-Attas]

While Rh control must contain every thing that the Anti-D cotains exept Anti-D,I agree that 22 to 30% albumin can be used as Rh control.

And that It is very important to use with an AB Rh positive patient.

[Wooly Mammoth]

As a matter of fact in December of 2006 after Immucor had their last tremendous increase I too looked at the Wall Street information available vs the Hospital pain of bearing the increased costs. We all know that American medicine is critisized for its cost as cries for nationalized health care ring out by some of the presidential candidates. I documented what was happening to us and the profits that Immucor was making particularly after buying out all their competion other than Ortho. Read their 10K statements on Yahoo finance and look at their stock performance over the past 5 years. They have suffered with the rest of the market's woes recently but when I wrote the FTC, Hillary, and Fienstein (California senator) in December 2006 their stock and profits had been skyrocketing, read the chart. After 3 months I did get a call from a lawyer in Washington DC and he said he'd get back with me and that was the end of it. The government is here to protect business ie:Bear Stearns etc. If all of you users would write and complain maybe it would help some, but don't count on it. Go to FTC.com and file a complaint!

[Mabel Adams]

I was thinking of doing antigen typing using traditional antisera in gel just to use smaller volumes of it, but once I realized we pay about $6 per IgG gel card, I am not sure if that will be a cost-effective answer for the most common antisera we use.

[Eagle Eye]

If the cost of anti-sera is $600 for 3 mL vial...1 drop will cost $10 for the test tube method against $5 for 25microliter for gel test plus $1 for one IgG well....you will definetly save with Gel technique. I know some of my tech likes to add two drops or repeat donor testing. I am sure with Gel you have result on paper(if you are using MTS reader) you are going to avoid all those wastage.

[conwaysbb]

deleted

[conwaysbb]

As a matter of fact in December of 2006 after Immucor had their last tremendous increase I too looked at the Wall Street information available vs the Hospital pain of bearing the increased costs. We all know that American medicine is critisized for its cost as cries for nationalized health care ring out by some of the presidential candidates. I documented what was happening to us and the profits that Immucor was making particularly after buying out all their competion other than Ortho. Read their 10K statements on Yahoo finance and look at their stock performance over the past 5 years. They have suffered with the rest of the market's woes recently but when I wrote the FTC, Hillary, and Fienstein (California senator) in December 2006 their stock and profits had been skyrocketing, read the chart. After 3 months I did get a call from a lawyer in Washington DC and he said he'd get back with me and that was the end of it. The government is here to protect business ie:Bear Stearns etc. If all of you users would write and complain maybe it would help some, but don't count on it. Go to FTC.com and file a complaint!

Most recently, I went and looked at all the buzz about Immucor in the stock market. It seemed their stock plummeted when Immucor bought the company that does the DNA phenotyping. Investors were very concerned. However, management informed their stockholders that they were going to be increasing their reagent pricing to their customers so the stock has since turned around. When I asked my Rep about the increase today, I was given the same tired answer (through no fault of her own), production costs, raw materials cost and R&D costs. These are NOT new costs!!! they are the same costs that they have always been and is a normal cost of doing business, not something new and unanticipated. Also talked about the costs associated with getting additional test menus on theri Echo and Galilleo, like antigen tessting and crossmatching. I was told they were going to do this years ago and was involved in a couple of surveys about what additional tests were wanted for automation. Again poor attempts at turning our eyes and ears to the real reason behind the price increase. Stock holder happiness and GREED!!!!

I just found some of my price lists for the last several years so will be developing an excel file which will tell me the % increase for the last couple of years and will try to give a final increase form a historical perspective. As I don't want Immucor to force this message board to remove the post I will not be incating the eact prices for the reagents but just the percentage increases.

[bbbirder]

Immucor isn't the only one increasing prices, Ortho is just as 'guilty'.

We really like doing antigen typing in gel for another reason, the card is there to review again and again if you need to. We don't have a reader, but considering the kind of confusion that can happen when screening many units for multiple antigens, the techs really find that they like the gel card vs tube.

Linda Frederick

[Rich Henry]

Is it possible these companies simply want out of this line of business without 'quiting?'

One way for a company to bow out without the ugliness of quiting (and news headlines to match) is to price themselves, purposefully, out of the market (more tasteful to news papers than just quiting for no apparent reason).

You have to ask if the blood banking product lines for these companies are as profitable as other non blood banking product lines (must include parent corporation in this question - the smaller blood banking company within the larger corp can always be shuttered).

Only the corporate leaders of these companies knows what's really on their strategic agenda.

[dawn w]

OOOUCH!!! Says my CFO :mad:

Have no fear there are other options.

1. Alba Blood Group Reagents www.albabioscience.com

2. Don't for get our friends at Olympus

3. BioRad will hopefully hit our markets soon, the sooner the better

[conwaysbb]

OOOUCH!!! Says my CFO :mad:

Have no fear there are other options.

1. Alba Blood Group Reagents www.albabioscience.com

2. Don't for get our friends at Olympus

3. BioRad will hopefully hit our markets soon, the sooner the better

The issues with Alba is that right now they have only a limited menu of antisera and no reagent red cells, so that if you do order some of their antisera , this may now push you out of your current priicing level into a higher pricing level. At least this is what my Immucor rep told me, so it would be more expensive in the long run. Also, Alba prices are competitive, meaning they come into the market using the exhorbitant current pricing levels created by Ortho & Immucor as a guide to their pricing target. Not much savings there

[C Lumbert]

Has anyone considered the option permitted by FDA and CAP to use outdated rare typing sera as long as QC is acceptable?

They do not permit this for easily obtainable reagents such as red cells, but list Anti-Jk-a, Le-a, etc as examples.

We wondered if this exception would permit use of rare typing sera to exhaustion, rather than tossing it after the outdate.

[Abdulhameed Al-Attas]

What about the option of in house preparation of reagents,Red cells and Antisera.

In 2003 during The Iraq war because of delayed delivery,we prepared some Red cell

reagents like coomb's check cells(IgG and C3d),and they were wonderful.

I don"t think the FDA,CAP and AABB will permit the use of in House Prepared reagents.

[AMcCord]

From reading I've done in various publications, my understanding of the 'rule' about using outdated rare antisera is that you may do so, with proper controls (of course), in "an emergency" or if the product is not commercially available. That would seem to make the routine use of outdated antisera a no-no. However, I don't see why you couldn't use the outdated stuff to 'pre-screen' donors. When you find the number of antigen negative units you need, use the indate reagent to confirm the antigen status of the units. That would save you a lot of antisera if you are not ordering antigen screened units from your blood supplier.

You can also 'prescreen' donors using your patient's serum/plasma, if they have a nice strong antibody and you have enough sample. Crossmatch multiple units to find some which are apparently compatible, then use your indate antisera to confirm the antigen status of the donor. That's the reverse of what we normally do. But as long as you fulfill the requirements for crossmatching patients with antibodies, it doesn't matter in what order you do the required tests - i.e. antigen negative and AHG crossmatch compatible. We froze serum from a frequent flyer patient with anti-E and anti-Di(a) and used it to prescreen donors for her. Saved us a lot of antisera.

You can prepare reagents in-house from sera, as long as you can meet the dilution criteria the FDA sets for the antibody in question. The criteria list is in the Technical Manual in the chapter on alloantibody detection and identification. I would think that the validation/jquality requirements would be too much hassle to be worthwhile for most of us.

[BBK710]

OOOUCH!!! Says my CFO :mad:

Have no fear there are other options.

1. Alba Blood Group Reagents www.albabioscience.com

2. Don't for get our friends at Olympus

3. BioRad will hopefully hit our markets soon, the sooner the better

Does anyone know anything about Biotest for traditional reagents?

[ksmith]

Does anyone know anything about Biotest for traditional reagents?

We met with our Biotest sales rep this week. Their reagents are in the final stages with FDA for approval. Should be available this summer. Hopefully by June. They have some nice looking monoclonal reagents. We do not have a price list yet. www.BiotestUSA.com

[J Schuler]

I was looking at possibly going to automation in the next year or so before the price increases. Anyway, I was looking at the Market Prices for both Ortho and Immucor traditional reagents using their new prices. When I figured out the prices by the bottle or mL - wouldn't you know it - most of the reagents from both companies cost exactly the same! I guess it comes down to which company you prefer. It is still a shame that those of us who are not able to go to instrumentation or do not want to are up a creek.

[noelrbrown]

We have been using Gamma clone Rh control. After looking at the price increases I was wondering what other people use for a control. We use it for AB pos typings and patient with a positive weak D.

Sue you can use 8% BSA, I believe ortho and Immucor state that as an alternative in their package inserts.

Noel

[noelrbrown]

I was looking at possibly going to automation in the next year or so before the price increases. Anyway, I was looking at the Market Prices for both Ortho and Immucor traditional reagents using their new prices. When I figured out the prices by the bottle or mL - wouldn't you know it - most of the reagents from both companies cost exactly the same! I guess it comes down to which company you prefer. It is still a shame that those of us who are not able to go to instrumentation or do not want to are up a creek.

Have you looked at Alba Bioscience as an alternative ? they just got FDA approval for 15 Blood group reagents. www.albabioscience.com

[noelrbrown]

We keep a supply of Anti-C, E, c, e, K, Fya, and Jka. I recently discontinued Anti-M and Anti-S since they cost the most and got used the least. These cover the majority of our transfusion problems. Our reference lab is able to provide us with S-negative units if needed, so I ditched the Anti-S. Anti-M is usually only significant if it reacts at 37C, so crossmatch-compatible units are usually OK for patients with documented Anti-M, and I can get M-neg units from the reference lab as well, so I said bye-bye to the Anti-M.

Jka is next on my list. I hate to spend that much for something I'll mostly use only on surveys, but I'll probably keep it around just in case.

Alba Bioscience has an anti M Monoclonal for $260.00 per 5 mls

www.albabioscience.com

Noel

[Bridget B]

We're looking to start using Alba Bioscience new blood grouping reagents any feedback on their monoclonals?

[Bridget B]

The issues with Alba is that right now they have only a limited menu of antisera and no reagent red cells, so that if you do order some of their antisera , this may now push you out of your current priicing level into a higher pricing level. At least this is what my Immucor rep told me, so it would be more expensive in the long run. Also, Alba prices are competitive, meaning they come into the market using the exhorbitant current pricing levels created by Ortho & Immucor as a guide to their pricing target. Not much savings there

Ortho rep said the same thing , i guess both Immucor & Ortho want to keep any new supplier out of US market so they can keep sticking it to us like gas companies

[Bridget B]

Does anyone know anything about Biotest for traditional reagents?

does anyone have experience with Alba bioscience blood grouping reagents ?

[ksmith]

does anyone have experience with Alba bioscience blood grouping reagents ?

We ordered Anti-k and Anti-Lub from them in February and their unlicensed Partial D kit in April. We were happy with the products. I can't comment on the stability of these products yet, it's too early to tell. We bought directly from them, they shipped the products to us overnight using our FedEx account. We used to get monthly price listing from them, but I haven't seen one recently.

We have recently been contacted by a third party saying they are now distributing Alba Bioscience products. We have not contacted Alba yet to verify this and the pricing.