• Transfusion · Nov 2015

    Reducing intraoperative red blood cell unit wastage in a large academic medical center.

    • Gina M Whitney, Marcella C Woods, Daniel J France, Thomas M Austin, Robert J Deegan, Allison Paroskie, Garrett S Booth, Pampee P Young, Roger R Dmochowski, Warren S Sandberg, and Michael A Pilla.
    • Department of Anesthesiology, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee.
    • Transfusion. 2015 Nov 1; 55 (11): 2752-8.

    BackgroundThe wastage of red blood cell (RBC) units within the operative setting results in significant direct costs to health care organizations. Previous education-based efforts to reduce wastage were unsuccessful at our institution. We hypothesized that a quality and process improvement approach would result in sustained reductions in intraoperative RBC wastage in a large academic medical center.Study Design And MethodsUtilizing a failure mode and effects analysis supplemented with time and temperature data, key drivers of perioperative RBC wastage were identified and targeted for process improvement.ResultsMultiple contributing factors, including improper storage and transport and lack of accurate, locally relevant RBC wastage event data were identified as significant contributors to ongoing intraoperative RBC unit wastage. Testing and implementation of improvements to the process of transport and storage of RBC units occurred in liver transplant and adult cardiac surgical areas due to their history of disproportionately high RBC wastage rates. Process interventions targeting local drivers of RBC wastage resulted in a significant reduction in RBC wastage (p < 0.0001; adjusted odds ratio, 0.24; 95% confidence interval, 0.15-0.39), despite an increase in operative case volume over the period of the study. Studied process interventions were then introduced incrementally in the remainder of the perioperative areas.ConclusionsThese results show that a multidisciplinary team focused on the process of blood product ordering, transport, and storage was able to significantly reduce operative RBC wastage and its associated costs using quality and process improvement methods.© 2015 AABB.

      Pubmed     Full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…

What will the 'Medical Journal of You' look like?

Start your free 21 day trial now.

We guarantee your privacy. Your email address will not be shared.