• Emmanuel A Fadeyi, Wanda Emery, Julie H Simmons, Mary Rose Jones, and Gregory J Pomper.
• Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Wake Forest University School of Medicine.
• Transfusion. 2017 Oct 1; 57 (10): 2477-2482.

BackgroundThe objective was to report a successful implementation of a blood cooler insert and tracking technology with educational initiatives and its effect on reducing red blood cell (RBC) wastage.Study Design And MethodsThe blood bank database was used to quantify and categorize total RBC units issued in blood coolers from January 2010 to December 2015 with and without the new inserts throughout the hospital. Radiofrequency identification tags were used with special software to monitor blood cooler tracking. An educational policy on how to handle the coolers was initiated. Data were gathered from the software that provided a real-time location monitoring of the blood coolers with inserts throughout the institution.ResultsThe implementation of the blood cooler with inserts and tracking device reduced mean yearly RBC wastage by fourfold from 0.64% to 0.17% between 2010 and 2015. The conserved RBCs corresponded to a total cost savings of $167,844 during the 3-year postimplementation period.ConclusionsThe implementation of new blood cooler inserts, tracking system, and educational initiatives substantially reduced the mean annual total RBC wastage. The cost to implement this initiative may be small if there is an existing institutional infrastructure to monitor and track hospital equipment into which the blood bank intervention can be adapted when compared to the cost of blood wastage.© 2017 AABB.

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