Creating Useful Statistics To Audit Transfusion Services
Gerald I. Shulman, Mickey Heidrich Moore, Jay S. Howell · Laboratory Medicine · 1998
Federal law and accrediting agencies require comprehensive documentation and review of all transactions involved in the collection, manufacture, testing, transfusion, and disposition of blood products. The documentation results in lengthy reports, some of which are shared with the hospital transfusion committee. The blood bank staff uses the data to manage inventory, track disposition of products, monitor budget controls, and project future needs. The difficulty experienced by the transfusion committee members and the blood bank staff with the lengthy and complex tabular display of data prompted us to develop a concise and meaningful graphic display for the data. “Control charts,” tools used in industrial engineering, were used to present monthly statistics graphically. Staff and committee members found the reports much more meaningful.