Audit-based corrective and preventive actions to reduce wastage of blood components at a single blood center: A quality improvement study

The rate of discarded blood components or "wastage rate" reflects on the whole process, preparation, and production of blood and its quality control. It is the ratio of blood and blood components discarded to the total number of collections. The discard or unusability of blood products are many, and the ones that can be monitored and regarded as indicators to be improvised on are QC failure rate, transfusion-transmitted infection (TTI) positivity, and component discards (other than TTI), including those that caused transfusion reactions. These were studied over four intervention cycles to see if they could be improved. This was a clinical audit and quality improvement study. The clinical audit was conducted over four cycles over 16 months. Each cycle included three stages wherein the data required for calculating those key performance indicators (KPIs) of the blood center were studied and analyzed, and causes for the poorly performing ones were identified; a corrective plan was drawn and implemented, followed by data collection and interpretation of the same in the next cycle for improvement. The data were compiled using a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet and analyzed using SPSS version 19 (IBM Corporation, New York, USA). The overall discard rates due to all cumulative causes mentioned were at about 5% at the start of the first cycle. The various factors comprising preparatory, preparation, and the management of inventory and issue were analyzed, and corrective interventions were performed in every cycle. The discard rates were reduced to about 3% by the end of the four cycles. The difference was statistically significant, with a < 0.05. The implementation of Corrective and preventive action measures can rectify the deviations in KPIs. The blood center director, staff, and doctors should be responsible for maintaining and continuously improving the quality indicators.