Effectiveness of transfer of expiring platelet units to reduce wastage across a healthcare system

Background/Case Studies: Platelets are critical to the management of diverse patient populations. As a scarce resource, they are also a high-cost blood component. Allied with their short shelf life and unpredictable usage, this risks wastage. We sought to reduce wastage (i.e., outdating) without imposing platelet shortages through refined distribution of platelets across our health system. Study Design/Methods: Platelets that were approaching expiration (i.e., morning of Day 5) at two community hospital-based blood banks were transferred to the largest of the three affiliates, a large tertiary care medical center. The approach extended over three years;initially it was adopted between two hospitals, and a third hospital was later included. Data were collected and recorded about the source of the platelet units, the number sent, the date received, and whether they were transfused or discarded/outdated. Results/Findings: Of the 596 units that were transferred to the main hospital over the study observation period, 561 units (94.1%) were transfused. Only 35 units (5.9%) were discarded. Given the approximate cost of a unit of platelets (i.e., US$ 500-700), this approach avoided wastage of around US$ 100,000-140,000 per year. Further, this approach improved emergency preparedness at the smaller hospitals given the ability to maintain larger platelet inventories for unexpected emergencies without risking waste. The model's success prompted the addition of a third hospital (all within a 20-mile radius). Conclusions: Given expansion of healthcare systems, careful inventory management of blood components such as platelets can optimize platelet availability while minimizing wastage. This gained impetus early during the COVID-19 pandemic when a host of challenges contributed to uncertainty in the blood supply necessitating conservation and/or optimization of extant blood inventories.