We are retiring our patient cards and will be depending on the computer. How long did you keep your patient cards and how

did your blood bank proceed to a 'paperless' system?

Did you check each card against the computer? Did you save the cards? Please assist in what your institution did?

Thanks

Bostonbloodbanker

We transitioned away from our manual backup patient cards a few years ago, after two years online.

First, we entered any "positive" cards not in the system. Then, we had a second person verify the presence of the "positive" records in the online backup system. Finally, we filed the small number of "positive" cards in our store room for 10 years, even though I doubt it we'll ever look at them again. The remainder of the cards were discarded.

Very similar process. Initially we went through all the cards and entered anyone who had antibodies ID'd or transfusion rxns or other problem we felt we would want to know about. Then for the next year, as a patient would come in we would pull their cards, update the computer files with previous data then box them up. At the end of the first year we threw away all of the non-problem/non-transfused cards and archieved all of the problem cards / transfused card for 10 years.

Boston, LCS and John... How big are your centers and what system are you on that allows you to be totally paperless??? I have been wanting that technology here, but I doubt that we are big enough to make the cost worthwhile. In 2007, our allos, autos and therapeutics combined were almost 5,000.

I work in a small rural facility running the Meditech system. The only BB thing still on paper is reagent QC and equipment PM, since the effort to put these online wouldn't be worth the small payback -- but I'm thinking about it! Each workstation has a PC, and reactions are entered as we read them. We've almost eliminated the transfusion form, too.

Modern enterprise systems are very good: mirrored, automatic backups, redundant. You still need a good backup system, just in case the network goes down, but it's pretty rare. Our operation is mostly plagerized from larger sites I've inspected over the years.

We consider ourselves "paper lite", not paperless. But being a green-thinking, tree-hugging Libertarian, any paper I can eliminate is fine with me. You just have to give up the ways things have been done for 30 years and be able to sleep well at night.

Wait... do you collect donors? Or are you a transfusion service only?

We are a 300 - 350 bed (depending on who is counting and why) hospital with a Transfusion Service. There is no such thing as paperless but we are greatly paper reduced. Currently we are on a very very very old Western Star/Lifeline system but are well on our way in implementing Wyngate's SafeTrace Tx which will reduce our paper load even more.

:pcproblem:pcproblem

No donors at this small rural site, but we were talking about patient cards. Meditech can handle the donor side, too, and almost all of it without paper. The little paper that is necessary, such as donor cards, would be scanned into its document system.

Again, you have to make the jump to embracing the technology that already exists -- but only if you're comfortable enough with it to sleep at night! Our entire facility has an EMR, and we're just a small fish in a very big technology pond. It would be too expensive to do this on our own.

Edited September 12, 200816 yr by Lcsmrz

We are on Meditech CS 5.55. We have our QC and daily maintenance in Meditech as a worksheet. It's not hard to set up once you figure out the first one. We still keep our antibody cards in case Meditech goes down. Mary Carton, Eliza Coffee Memorial, Florence, Al.