title: Operational effectiveness and quality assurance mechanisms with stochastic demand of blood supply: blood bank case study.
abstract: A general overview of various blood products operational effectiveness and related strategies that can be utilised by service providers (in particular, healthcare providers) is presented in the present study. In terms of the massive volumes of blood products, the North American blood centres collect more than eight million units of whole blood, which represents appropriately 50% of the US and Quebec, Canada?s volunteer donor blood supply. A case study of the quality inspection and inventory control concerns of the Central Blood Bank, located in the metropolitan area of Pittsburgh, PA, is presented. Initially, brief introduction to its general operating environment is followed by sections describing its general situation, quality-service initiatives, and followed by a fairly detailed discussion of the practical applications of lessons learned from the case study.
authors.affiliation: Department of Management and Marketing, Robert Morris University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA. smitha@rmu.edu
authors.forename: Alan D
authors.initials: AD
authors.lastname: Smith
mesh_terms: D001771:Blood Banks / Q000191:economics / Q000458:organization & administration* / Q000592:standards; D003365:Costs and Cost Analysis; D057172:Economic Recession; D017598:Efficiency, Organizational; D006301:Health Services Needs and Demand / Q000191:economics / Q000458:organization & administration* / Q000592:standards; D006801:Humans; D008330:Management Audit; D009656:North America; D019982:Organizational Case Studies; D009939:Organizations, Nonprofit / Q000458:organization & administration; D010414:Pennsylvania; D011785:Quality Assurance, Health Care / Q000191:economics / Q000458:organization & administration* / Q000592:standards; D013048:Specimen Handling / Q000191:economics / Q000379:methods; D013269:Stochastic Processes