Background/Case Studies: A large southeastern United States blood center historically discarded an average of 2% red cell products per month due to outdate. Some of these red cells were in a quarantined status at the time of expiration and the discard status was not properly assigned. To increase the visibility of the quarantined products across the key departments of the organization and to improve the timely disposition of the units, Tableau visual analytics software was implemented. Tableau is a visual analytics platform utilized by the blood center’s data science department.
Study
Design/Methods: Requirements were gathered and the Quarantined Products Dashboard was built. The report includes a high-level summary dashboard aggregating the products by expiration date or by responsible department, and a detailed dashboard with information to start the research to resolve the quarantined status. The high-level summary dashboard presents data by Location Hub, Isolation Reason, and responsible department (Biologics, QA, Donor Services Support). The products are prioritized by different colored expiration buckets: Products expiring in less than 10 days are red, 11-20 days are pink, 21-30 days are orange, >30 days are yellow (Figure 1). Blood center users from the responsible departments were onboarded to the platform. The steps to review the report consist of initially reviewing the high-level dashboard and selecting the high priority (red) bucket corresponding to the appropriate department and location. The subsequent steps include accessing the detailed dashboard to see the unit number, then accessing the BECS system to resolve the status of the unit. Both resolution actions, releasing or discarding, will cause the unit number to disappear from the dashboard when the Tableau application refreshes. If there is a need to message another department regarding the unit, the user can use the messaging feature of the application.
Results/Findings: The dashboard has successfully created visibility for Quarantined Products and facilitated inter-departmental communication with the objective of increasing the timely resolution of quarantined products. Within 10 working days of implementation, we reduced the number of unresolved quarantined RBC products by 47% (228 down to 120). In the same time frame, the two highest priority expiration bucket for RBC products were reduced by 94% (95 to 6) and (18 to 1), respectively. For the subsequent 25 days, the two highest priority buckets have each maintained a total of 10 or less products at all times (measured daily). Conclusions: Utilizing the visual analytics platform Tableau to display the Quarantined Products Dashboard has increased the awareness for products in quarantine status across several departments. Additionally, it has shortened the time to resolution for products in quarantine and allowed for the timely disposition.
Importance of research: The driving force behind this project is ensuring the maintenance of an adequate and safe blood supply for patients. For the purposes of this project, this means resolving quarantined products to release them to patients or assign the correct disposition reason. By utilizing data science resources that are available today, we are able to be better stewards of the blood supply.
