ImpactLife Business Development, Iowa, United States
Background/Case Studies: There is increasing interest in implementing prehospital transfusion programs amongst Emergency Medical Services (EMS). Beyond blood product support, the blood center can also serve to educate and promote standardization in a field of variable practice while also bridging hospital communication and process alignment to support downstream patient care events. Here we share our blood center’s one-year experience in process improvement in developing a comprehensive Prehospital Transfusion Toolkit for EMS programs and describe an evaluation of its impact within the community.
Study
Design/Methods: Key to our implementation was developing a survey designed to capture EMS program demographics, anticipated blood product needs, status of storage and transport equipment, and hospital partner distribution. Additionally, questions were asked to gauge interest in marketing, public relations and academic collaboration. With this information, contracts were formalized, and coordination of product shipment and chain of custody was determined. Prior to implementation, we provided training in quality assurance, regulatory requirements, process for product recall and transfusion reactions, and use of our web-based ordering system. Additionally, we ensure communication between EMS partners and affiliated hospitals to create policies. Finally, we continue to offer continued support, consultation and education.
Results/Findings: After implementing the process improvement in July 2022, we onboarded two new programs, growing our territory by a 1,100 mile radius. Our single state footprint quickly expanded into a four contiguous state territory. Prior to July 2022, we provided low titer group O whole blood (LTOWB) to three bases. With rapid program growth, our current donor base was unable to support an increased demand, therefore we transitioned to providing O-packed red blood cells (pRBCs) and non titered Group A liquid plasma (LQP). Finally, blood product availability was strengthened with EMS sponsored blood drives (see Table 1). Feedback from our partners has been positive:
EMS 1: “[Blood Center] has been pivotal in creating, building, and establishing the blood program at our organization.”
EMS 2: “…due to the unique demographics of our service area, access to pre-hospital blood products is an imperative link in the chain of survival for our patients. I can confidently say, one life has already been saved in the first 90 days of our program.” Conclusions: Optimizing our prehospital transfusion program added an infrastructure to help us efficiently onboard more EMS partners, thus providing a streamlined process as well as delivering products to more regions and communities. We hope to continue to centralize opportunities of advancing prehospital transfusion practice to optimize patient outcomes.
Importance of research: Optimizing our prehospital transfusion program added an infrastructure to help us efficiently onboard more EMS partners, thus providing a streamlined process as well as delivering products to more regions and communities. We hope to continue to centralize opportunities of advancing prehospital transfusion practice to optimize patient outcomes.
