Greetings,

Our hospital system is performing an RFP for purchase of an automated recall management system. The systems that are out there (like RASMAS and Hazard Track) are mainly aimed at managing medical device and pharmaceutical recalls, but they say they also include automatic notification of blood product and laboratory product recalls and safety alerts. Are any of your hospitals utilizing an automated product recall management system? If yes, what system are you using and how do you use the system in the Transfusion Service/Blood Bank environment? Any help or feedback would be appreciated.

Marisa

We use Rasmas for our medical devices and will not be using it for blood supply. Since each unit is recalled individually, it seemed like a waste of time to submit them online. ARC has their automated system, we use a paper trail.

We use RASMAS for all recalls. Having said that, I agree with clmergen that the automated system as it is now is not good for blood product recalls. That is still manual for actual use (we still get the RASMAS notifications). The biggest problem I have had is with the way the recalls are classified. Most of the recalls I have gotten are for non-Lab products (I'm not even talking about narrowing it to only products that I use in blood bank - I get surgical supply recalls all the time!). Otherwise I like the system fairly well.

Our purchasing department does the initial weeding out of non-relevant recalls and then assigns the pertinant recalls to the appropriate departments based on acutal purchase orders and lot numbers. The only problem I had was purchasing didn't know that the different Transfusion Services "shared" reagents. So I have it set up now, that every Transfusion Service gets every recall that applies to any of the other Transfusion Services.

It is uncommon for us to get recalls. Some people will submit the Immucor Technical bulletins so I have to answer those, but I usually see those before they get on RASMAS. The system seems pretty happy with RASMAS, I know I don't have any problems with it.

Thank you both so much for your feedback! I will definitely keep your comments in mind as we move forward.