Availability of Blood Components and Utilization in a Teaching Hospital Blood Center

Background: The quality of blood centers and transfusion services is judged by the timely availability of blood components and their effective utilization by those in need. Proper utilization of the needed blood components can also prevent the wastage of blood products. Stock management of blood and blood components will increase their maximum availability and utilization. Many studies have shown that a lack of blood and its components increases the risk of severe complications in patients who require blood transfusions on an emergency basis, such as during intraoperative or postpartum hemorrhage, in trauma patients with severe anemia, and so on. All the health-care sectors need supportive facilities to provide on-time services to their customers. Hospital image and the quality of health-care services will be influenced by customer and patient satisfaction. The blood center plays a vital role in that by providing lifesaving blood and its components on an emergency basis as well as to the needy population. Objective: The goals of this research are to examine the stock availability of blood and blood components, to determine the utilization of blood units based on consumer needs, and to discover and analyze blood and blood component waste before use. Methodology: A retrospective study was conducted in a teaching hospital blood center on stock verification and the issuing of blood components. The retrospective record analysis was performed for 18 months. Sampling Method: The availability of stock and the utilization of blood and blood components data were collected from January 2021 to June 2022 from registers maintained and documented in the blood center. Conclusion: Our study provided a clear picture of how to maintain the stock level of blood units and blood components by explicitly stating the percentage of collection, stock level maintained for emergency needs, and percentage of utilized blood and blood components. We were able to determine the number of blood and blood component discards throughout the study and the causes of these discards so that we could implement the best inventory control for blood units in accordance with our analysis of GroupWise blood units' stock level maintenance to satisfy customer needs.