Blood transfusion has been cited by the American Medical Association as one of the top five most overused therapies in the United States. Moreover, studies have shown that when there are fewer transfusions in a hospital setting, patients generally do better, as they're not exposed to potential transfusion risks.
With that in mind, Stanford Health Care has made a concerted effort since 2009 to effectively reduce the number of patients who receive transfusions. Since that time, patient outcomes have improved, including lower mortality rates and length of stay in the hospital. Moreover, blood costs have been markedly reduced, a new study finds.
Between 2009 and 2013, the number of red blood cell units transfused annually at Stanford Health Care fell almost 24 percent – from 29,472 to 22,991. At the same time, mortality rates and length of stays decreased overall among hospital patients. The decline occurred despite the fact that the volume of patients receiving treatment was higher and patients came in with more complex medical problems, according to the researchers, led by Lawrence Goodnough, MD, a professor of pathology and medicine and director of the hospital’s transfusion service.
Goodnough helped implement a program that uses the hospital’s electronic medical record system to alert clinicians to blood-use guidelines and relevant medical literature whenever they request a transfusion. The physician is asked to explain the reason for the transfusion, prompting him or her to reconsider whether it is also needed. As a result, the overall percentage of patients transfused dropped from 21.9 percent in 2009 to 17 percent in 2013, the researchers reported.
The researchers more closely analyzed outcomes for 3,622 patients transfused before implementation of the system and some 10,500 patients who received transfusions after the change. In this group, mortality rates fell from 5.5 percent to 3.3 percent. Patients also spent less time in the hospital (down from 10 to 6.2 days) and were less likely to be readmitted within 30 days.
In the process, the hospital has saved some $1.62 million annually in costs over each of the four years, not including indirect costs, such as patient testing and administration of blood, the researchers calculated.
A similar 2011 study conducted at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford found that the automated alerts saved the children’s hospital 460 unnecessary red blood cell transfusions and $165,000 in one year, while patients who needed transfusions still received them.
“For health care institutions, improved blood utilization is accompanied by improved quality of care as measured by decreased patient exposure to unnecessary red blood cell transfusions, decreased blood transfusion-related costs and improved patient outcomes,” authors of the latest study, which appears in the current issue of the journal Transfusion, concluded.
Previously: Stanford Hospital trims use of blood supplies and New issue of Stanford Medicine magazine asks, What do we know about blood?
Related: Against the flow: What's behind the decline in blood transfusions?
Illustration by Jonathon Rosen
