Challenge Blood products are a precious and costly resource for the organization. During surgical procedures in high-use surgical services blood products get wasted. Wasted blood products can be reduced and possible avoided entirely. The project with Stanford Hospitals and Clinics for the Stanford HealthCare Consultancy group involved identifying the reasons for blood wastage, suggesting improvements, gaining support from a large diverse task force consisting of Transfusion Services Members, Cardiac OR Surgeons, Nursing Staff and Hospital Administration, implementing the suggested measures and measuring the change in blood utilization after implementation.

Solution I lead a team of five consultants to improve blood utilization practices in the hospital. After conducting field interviews, observations, surveys and interviews the team developed a three pronged approach to improving blood utilization at the hospital. Implemented solution to increased the average time of keeping the blood product safe by more than two times (Figure below).

• A) Consolidate the reporting codes for blood wastage (from 28 codes to 5),
• B) Add Cold Packs to blood products transferred from TS to OR. We pilot tested the use of sending cold packs (calculated transit time from TS to OR for different time of day) and analyzed data from pilot test to form recommendations on full-scale implementation and impact on Stanford Hospital.
• C) Hospital Wide Education Campaign using stickers on cold packs.