I should start my mentioning that my hospital has been using a BB LIS since 1992, however we've also been duplicating our efforts by creating and maintaining a paper card file for each patient as well.   Crazy, right?  So all cards since 1992 are a duplicate of the data already stored in the LIS, so that’s easy to deal with.   Even some of the pre-1992 cards can be manually entered in to the LIS ( a lot of work but not too bad-small hospital). 

 

Problem:  It’s the pre-1992 cards which contain historically relevant transfusion information (antibodies, requirements, etc.) that I cannot enter manually into the LIS because the cards lack a medical record number and D.O.B.   30+ years ago the hospital used a patient name and wristbands as the identifiers. 

 

Has anyone had a similar experience with this dilemma and could offer some suggestions?    I’d really like to not keep a separate file that techs would need to search.

 

Thank you.

At first glance this sounds like a moot point. If you can't positively link a card to a patient the information they contain is worthless anyhow.

I agree that it is pretty questionable if you have no DOB for full patient ID, but if you wanted to enter these patients in your system (because if Cedric Herzenschnerltzer comes in again you might want to know that someone with that name had an anti-Jka in 1987 so you could antigen type him and give him neg units if needed), could you create a bogus MRN for them, maybe mostly letters like History1987CH so it is clear that they are from that untrustworthy lot?  Then you could either ask Medical Records to provide you with a DOB or you could enter them all with a DOB of 1/1/1880 or something so you know it is bogus.  You could also search a social security death index and only keep the ones that might still be living.

 

I guess ask yourself what you would do with these if you had the information.  Would you antigen type them and, if negative, give antigen negative blood even if the screen were not reacting?  If you wouldn't do anything with the info, it is not worth having.

If i'm not mistaken, you only need to save them for 10 years (AABB 5.13.5).  That being said I obviously see that you would want to keep information on any potential patients who might come back in.  We had a similar situation here with an old card file that was kept before the implementation of our LIS system.    What I did was enter the information that I could (patietns that were in the current LIS but hadn't had any BB testing done) and then weeded out the patients who were not coming back (as in patients 100 or older, patients we knew had passed) then finally we had the remaining cards converted into an HTML format.  We have an icon on our pcs that when you click on it a screen opens and you can search for the patient name.  We use it when we have a patient who has no history on file in our LIS.

Ditch the old card records if you can't get them built.  You'll be fine.

All our old records have been scanned into the system. Ones with barcodes it was easy peasy, ones with just a sample number had to have the number typed in (great job for a trainee to make them appreciate how easy we have it now). The scanned record can be viewed as an option in the LIS when you bring the patient record up. Here in the UK records have to be kept for 30 years, so any prior to that have been disposed of.

I agree with goodchild and Terri.  It's time to send those cards to the great confidential recycle bin in the sky.

 

Mabel has a great suggestion too.  Back in 1994 when we converted to electronic BBIS we searched the SS death in and back entered the ones that were still alive.

 

Good luck and welcome to "paperless" blood banking......

When we search for >100yrs & check against death register, even if pulling them out of the live register, we keep in a Deceased Abs file - purely for statistical purposes - could be a paper in it some time.

 

Cheers

Eoin

We've decided to pursue a "fake" MRN and DOB to retain the historically relevant information for those who are not deceased.   We understand that the records are not completely reliable with only the patient’s name is many cases but we will error on the side of caution if this situation arises.  We're already through the letter "C" in our card file!  

 

Thanks for the many great suggestions and encouragement.