title: A regional blood management system with prescheduled deliveries.
abstract: The prescheduling of blood deliveries from regional blood centers can improve blood availability at all transfusion services while reducing outdating, delivery costs and inventories maintained at region blood centers. A procedure for determining optimal distribution policies that maintain the highest possible blood availability at transfusion services while holding the achievable outdating level to a small percentage of the total usage is described. The manner in which this plan is being implemented in Long Island, New York, is presented, as well as a discussion of some preliminary results.
mesh_terms: D001771:Blood Banks / Q000458:organization & administration*; D003695:Delivery of Health Care / Q000458:organization & administration*; D006739:Hospital Administration / Q000458:organization & administration*; D006750:Hospital Distribution Systems / Q000458:organization & administration*; D006761:Hospitals; D006801:Humans; D007445:Inventories, Hospital; D008954:Models, Biological; D009518:New York; D013997:Time Factors