blood inventory

[larevalo]

Last week I had problem with our supplier.They changed their policy not to accept our blood returned units (7 days before the expiry date)as what was agreed upon.That might increase our waste units.So the tendency is to change our policy re- returned units and decrease the standing order for each group.In applying the inventory level I follow the formula on AABB Tech Manual + the blood ordering request guidelines.The ave.no. of transfused Units/week is 8 ,so in 1 mos. is 32 units.Our blood anticoagulant are mostly Sagm(42 days exp.date)My problem is when there RTA patient comes ,most doctors here are requesting 10,10,10 for each blood components and addition of 10,10,10 for suceeding time until the patient is not stable,they will request for more...The total no.of standing blood I have is 40 units, how will I manage this if my Group O is just 14?and to request blood from our blood supplier will take max. of 2 hours to reach our facility? will you help me pls.

[adiescast]

That is a tough question. I assume your blood supplier is now not accepting any returns from you at all...

You have a couple of options and you may want to exercise both. You can continue to stock a higher level of O units and give them to anyone who needs blood in the last x (3, 5, 7, whatever gets them moved in an appropriate time frame) days before they expire, doing your best to avoid extra wastage.

You can talk to your doctors about their pattern of ordering and work out something that may be less blood intensive. There will be some patients for whom the only solution is to transfuse. It is possible, however, that there are situations in which the doctors currently choose transfusion when other options are available (and may even be better for the patient). You can use some of the blood conservation literature to help with this conversation. Try www.noblood.org (requires free registration) or www.sabm.org for focused sites, otherwise, just google "blood conservation" and fish through the >400,000 hits.

I hope this helps some!

[larevalo]

To adiescast,thanks for the info. this will help me a lot in resolving the problem.