Does anyone know how long we need to retain copies of Antigrams from screening cells or panels? Having a hard time finding any definitive information.

Thanks for any help!

I'm thinking 5 years, based on AABB standard 5.14.3, but I am not completely sure.

We currently don't as we have electronic access on the manufacturer's web site.

It is not required to save blank antigrams.   

We should really just get someone under each accreditation agency to get their standards interp. group to interpret this one for us and post it. It crops up on these forums so often.

I am now retired but we had an imaging system in our Lab. and I imaged all completed antigrams.  We could then store and recall them indefinitely.

No regs to retain blank copies that I'm aware of HOWEVER there's a great practical reason: to easily make more copies when someone has used the last one. Nothing more annoying than having to make a copy of one that has been used, whiting out reactions and literally cutting and pasting parts of another form on there. If you have electronic access to blanks that's easier, but still not as easy as making a photocopy. As soon as a new lot of screening/panel cells comes in, we pop a blank into a notebook to be used if needed. When it starts getting full I toss some out. Easy peasy.

I am interested in scanning the old completed antibody workups to some sort of file for long term storage. We have a printer that will scan to email and then that could be moved to another file.

Does anyone out there have a good way of being able to reliably access the file by name or medical record number in the future? Any help would be appreciated.

We do not keep blank antigrams. When that panel is gone we get rid of the blank sheets. But how long do you keep the completed antigrams with patient information? I am keeping for 10 years but would like to keep them  for less amount of time.

We now keep them after I was accused of identifying an antibody wrongly as the results I entered on the computer did not match what the 2nd check person expected. Turns out the panel expired overnight and they were checking against the new one. As the panel sheet had been thrown away and the bins emptied I had to track down the old panel sheet to prove I wasn't a total imbecile lol

No regs to retain blank copies that I'm aware of HOWEVER there's a great practical reason: to easily make more copies when someone has used the last one. Nothing more annoying than having to make a copy of one that has been used, whiting out reactions and literally cutting and pasting parts of another form on there. If you have electronic access to blanks that's easier, but still not as easy as making a photocopy. As soon as a new lot of screening/panel cells comes in, we pop a blank into a notebook to be used if needed. When it starts getting full I toss some out. Easy peasy.

 

Ditto!