Integrating Premier products provides information to help reduce blood costs
Laboratory Regional Meeting
Blood Cost & Utilization Study
- What methods for preoperative, perioperative and postoperative methods are available for blood conservation?
- What are the best tracking metrics and benchmarks to use to monitor blood and blood products?
- What methods can be employed to modify physician practice and educate physicians?
- What are the best ways for developing transfusion triggers?
- What methods could we use to negotiate the cost of blood products?
Challenge:
A member suggestion prompted Premier region directors and clinical specialists to design a regional laboratory meeting for Carolinas, Tennessee, Florida and Georgia hospitals to examine blood costs and use. Blood procurement and utilization costs are the largest cost in most hospital laboratories besides labor. With healthcare reform legislation, identifying the most cost- and clinically effective processes for delivering quality patient care is a must.
Solution:
To identify potential savings opportunities, Premier applied its unique performance improvement model – a combination of its proprietary clinical outcomes and resources benchmarking product and a cost and waste template along with its field clinical experts and consultants. The aim is to reduce the use of blood and blood products, improve patient safety and reduce supply costs, identify best performers for cost and utilization and transfer knowledge among hospitals to drive improvements.
Result:
Fifty-three hospitals that together spend $64.3 million on blood annually provided data on cost and waste; 38 of the hospitals have QualityAdvisor™, Premier’s data-driven product for measuring and analyzing performance to achieve positive, sustainable change.
QualityAdvisor data was used to examine four DRGs – cardiac surgery, hips, knees and oncology. Each participant was compared to the top 25th percentile in clinical outcomes and cost-effectiveness in the QualityAdvisor database. Significant opportunities for most of the participants were identified
Each participating hospital provided information about blood product cost and waste.
- The highest product waste for live red blood cells was 6.2 percent versus an expected rate of less than 1 percent, and for platelets was 43.3 percent versus an expected rate of less than 5 percent.
- The cost of live red blood cells ranged from $139 to $275, and for single donor platelets from $480 to $670.
Premier experts:
- reviewed survey responses and QualityAdvisor data analysis;
- detailed how other hospitals are reducing blood and blood products to achieve savings and improve quality of care;
- reviewed how QualityAdvisor reports can help determine a hospital’s blood use compared to other hospitals; and
- outlined next steps for implementing new processes and practices.
"I appreciate the opportunity to participate in the Premier blood
utilization survey and discuss the survey results with other laboratory managers
who are facing the daunting challenge of providing adequate blood products at a
reasonable cost. The case studies of hospitals that have had success with blood
conservation programs have motivated our health system to adopt similar
strategies to control expenses and ensure that a scarce commodity is provided to
the sickest patients."
Susan L. Pemberton MS, MT(ASCP)SM, DLM
Laboratory Administrative Director
Baptist Health
Jacksonville, FL
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