How long must we keep panels?

 

How long must we keep returned signed Rhogam slips?

 

I am starting to go thru all of our patient cards to get head start on this computer system coming. I think I may have Rhogam slips from when Rhogam was invented! LOL...but really not funny...I have a headache again!

 

CAP checklist for record retention says " patient pre-transfusion testing results" 10 years, but then transfusion problems such as transfusion reaction, unexpected antibodies..." says keep indefinitely. So wasnt sure about the panels. I think we need to keep the patient card indefinitely that has the ab id on it, but maybe can discard panel at 10 years? I sure hope so!

 

Thank you for the help!

I don't use the Rhogam slips - that info is in my hospital system.  I keep panels "indefinitely".  I like the idea of just keeping the pt record but not sure if I am ready to discard "paper".

Don't use the Rhophylac/RhoGAM manufacturer's forms. Also keep panel antigrams only with patient workup.

Blood Bankers should be thinking "digital storage" and optical archiving for the future!

I always read that standard that panels needed to be kept forever, but someone just pointed out to me that you have to keep the results of antibody ID indefinitely, but not necessarily the work it took to get there.  So, if you have a record that says "anti-Fya", that needs to stay indefinitely, but the panel that led you there only needs to be kept for 10 years.

What country are you in? If you are in the UK, it is 30 years, not 10.

I have had the idea to keep them digitally, by scanning them and saving them on file. For one of my questions to pick a BB module, I had listed to see if there are any programs out there that you can scan the panels and save on thier patient histroy for easy look up.

 

I am in the US.

I agree with CMCDCHI. We keep the paper panels for 10 years. The antibody ID, transfusion reaction,etc information is retained in the computer system indefinitely. We rarely look at panel sheets older than 5 years. Although we had to look at a patient panel result from 2007 the other day to see when she formed a particular antibody.

OK, so I think I asked something around this recently. I am clearing out a ton of very old records (mostly putting into Storage) and I really wonder what "Indefinitely" means- if a patient has expired, can we dispose of the panel records also after a time? I can imagine that the possibility of someone wanting to review records in a death investigation but , for example, I have records dating back to the 80s on patients who would now be 110 if they are alive. I have old patient workcards of officially expired patients that have sat there for years. If the information/history of the patient and the units they received and their antibody history is retrievable elsewhere, there's no reason to keep the cards of the expired patients right?

I keep deceased patient charts for 10 years then I toss them.  I emailed CAP about this, to which they agreed, although they did say I should check with Risk Management to see if they had a different requirement. Of course, their antibody results are still in our computer

For the expired patients, I decided to keep the paper workcards indefinitely if they had an ABX or other sig history and I am tossing the rest of them whenever the file gets full which should take a couple of years. All of the patient info is kept in other files including the medical records so hopefully I will never be challenged on keeping "dead" patient workcards available in the lab itself

We don't keep any paper records on patients that don't have antibodies. Their results are put in the computer. The only charts we keep are patients with antibodies.