Hello All. I am trying to change my quality measurement indicator . Can anybody suggest few indicators besides percentage of correct ABO/Rh and turn around time which are good and helpful? Thanks:rolleyes:

Hmmm... Blood Bank can be tough for choosing good indicators (something that has impact and which you, in turn, can impact with changes in process). A few that come to mind are:

TAT for antibody ID completion and/or antigen negative units being available

Correct and complete antibody ID on first pass

Internal wastage statistics of various types

FDA Reportable error rates

Non-FDA reportable labeling error rates (corrected prior to issue)

Products available for release when needed

This is my short list of what rapidly comes to mind. I hope something in there is useful.

We also do correct and complete labelling of Blood Bank patient specimens.

we look at transfusion appropriatness. we question each and every order but orders which need to go through MD are documented and reported as one of the indicator @ transfusion comm.

STAT TAT for type & crossmatch, wastage of component, outdates of components

On a monthly basis you could give each quality deviation/ incident recorded a 'value' such as serious incidents = 10 points, minor incidents= 2 points. Total these up and compare the arbitary values.

The higher the total score is = more time the lab spent in dealing with problems ( therefore an increased cost to the company).....negative quality indicator.

Obviously the lower the value you achieve might be indicative of improvements.

You could then establish an ideal 'value' (zero would not be realistic), by which you could measure against monthly.

We have several monitors, some directed at utilization review, some directed at patient safety, and some at service. Utilization review: we monitor C/T ratio (good old standby) with a threshhold of 1.5, product wasteage, and appropriateness of transfusion through the transfusion committee. Patient safety: we monitor the specimen rejections for inadequate labeling (patient ID) and the times nursing personnel present to blood bank to pick up product with inadequate patient ID information. We also review the transfusion record for complete documentation. Service: we monitor TAT on uncrossmatched request, TAT on STAT crossmatch from emergency room, and frequency of incomplete orders from our blood supplier. Hopefully you can find something that works for you.

I measure transfusion documentation. Started within 30 finished within 4 hrs. signature of transfusonist and verifier, reaction and documentation returned within 24 hrs. We are having a lot of trouble with Nursing Service documenting. Mary