We have been asked to perform an end of year blood product/blood derivative inventory report which will then immediately be audited by a member of the Finance department who will count 10-20% of the items to make sure the counts match. The final report is then sent to a 3rd party auditing company. I explained that our count would be a snapshot in time and there would most likely be a difference between our count and the Finance count.

Has anyone else had to do this? How did you handle units that are in the OR? Finance told us not to count them, even thought they may ultimately return unused.

When I worked with a consignment system, I would do that annually on Jan 1st. Now, I do a monthly reconciliation to account for every unit. Our bean counters never ask me to do anything special.

We all do our internal reconciliation but this finance thing is new to me. We have to give tham a spreadsheet listing item, quantity, unit value, and total value. They expect their audit to match our count so between the time we do our count and the finance audit, we have to keep a tally of everything that comes in and goes out so we can reconcile any differences. ...or we shut the Blood Bank down until the bean counters show up and do their audit!

I wonder if they are doing this for insurance purposes. Then again, maybe they think I am stealing blood and selling it on the black market. (If anyone is short on O Negs over Labor Day weekend give me a call ). If a count is what they want, we will certainly cooperate and do our best. I just hope we don't have a trauma or bloody liver transplant in progress.

Bev, I've never heard of such a thing.

A few years ago I was discussing the demise of American health care with my medical director and she agreed with me that the down fall began when CEOs of hospitals were no longer physicians or other medical people but MBAs instead.

Currently I am struggling with the idea that we are exactly the same as a Toyota factory.

We have the Toyota thing going on here too. I usually try to find some medical emergency that needs tending to or some other reason for me to be elsewhere when I get called to one of those meetings. :abduction

Well said John. I came across this sentiment a number of years ago, the author went on to say that universities seemed to be moving in that direction and he lamented that soon universities would be in the same situation as hospitals. Incidentally, your phrasing was succinct; the other author required one bar in a newspaper.