title: Should hospitals collect blood components?: no.
abstract: Over the last decade, the costs of blood procurement have increased as a result of regulatory pressure and scientific progress in understanding transfusion-transmitted disease. At the same time, hospitals are under tremendous pressure to reduce costs. Hospital blood banks are evaluating different strategies, including in-house or "out-sourced" blood collection, as a means of reducing collections. These decisions, however, should be made on assessments of the total cost of a safe and reliable blood supply: recruitment, collection, donor management, testing, manufacturing/processing, quality control, inventory management, quality assurance, regulatory, overhead and availability. If all of these costs are considered, it is unlikely that cost reduction can be achieved through hospital collections.
authors.affiliation: American Red Cross, New England Region, Dedham, MA, USA.
authors.forename: M A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Popovsky
mesh_terms: D001771:Blood Banks / Q000191:economics*; D001781:Blood Component Removal / Q000191:economics*; D001800:Blood Specimen Collection / Q000191:economics*; D003363:Cost Control; D004469:Economics, Hospital