Does anyone have a quick or easy calculation to determine the number of units of red blood cells that should be kept in inventory in the hospital blood bank? We have delivery from our blood supplier every day Monday through Friday. Supplier is about one hour away from our hospital.

There are many additional variables besides the distance from the supplier, but generally RBC inventory levels should be set at a 1.5-2 week level. For example, if you generally transfuse 10 O Positive RBCs per week, then your inventory level for O Positive should be somewhere between 15 and 20. So on days you are receiving a delivery, you would order to replinsh to that 15-20 target.

I understand that there are lots of variables to consider. Do you know if your information of 1.5-2 week level supply is published somewhere? It makes sense to me; I just would like to be able to see information or data in writing. Thank you for your help!

I gave a quick glance through the AABB Technical Manual and couldn't find a reference for you, vam3401. However, I would suggest to you that what would probably be more important than a documented reference is to start with an particular inventory level (perhaps such as SMW recommends), then monitor and reevaluate your inventory level periodically. You will probably need to fine-tune it every so often to find the inventory level that's high enough to handle your volume comfortably, but not so high that you are expiring/wasting many donor units. Good luck!

Donna

If you have a copy of the 14th Edition AABB Technical Manual (the 50th Anniversary Edition), there are 3 methods described for determining inventory levels (starting on page 80). They are: average weekly use estimate, average daily use estimate, and moving average method.