(P-IV-2) Developing The Best Platelet Collection Strategy

When the Platelet Guidance was enacted in 2021, our Blood Center made the decision to offer both PRT and LVDS platelets to our hospital partners.  When our overall platelet collections dipped in 2022, we realized our product release was not aligning with our actual daily usage.  To make up for the demand, we routinely imported platelets at a price point that was considerably more than our in-region platelet fee.  We decided to take a close look at our PRT and LVDS production to determine if varying the production mix of 5- and 7-day products would help get us through days of low collections or high demand.

Study

Design/Methods:

Analyzing our platelet production to shipments, we see total platelets produced and shipped are almost even; however, the daily platelet release versus the daily units shipped were not equal.
Next, we looked at the percent mix of PRT versus LVDS produced on any given day and determined that 20 – 30% of the platelets produced were PRT with a one-day release, the balance LVDS are released two days post collection.
At this time, we decided to use the release times of the PRT / LVDS to our advantage. By utilizing the 2 Day hold of the LVDS products collected on Friday and Saturday, we had a fresh release of these products on Monday and Tuesday, allowing us to easily handle the beginning of the week surgery schedules.  We also collect a majority of LVDS platelets on Monday, which are released to us for use on Thursdays.  We closely monitor our Monday collection and if they are not robust, we switch to collecting most of our platelet collections as PRT, that are released the day after collection.  We have slowly increased our PRT collection percentage by working closely with our Collections and QC Lab teams.

Results/Findings:

The challenge of having a constantly stable platelet supply on Thursday’s and Fridays was overcome with improved teamwork and communication.   A collaborative effort among the staffs of collection, QC and Distribution staff worked together to address this shortage, and over a short period of time, we increased our Tuesday through Thursday production of PRT platelets by approximately 12%.  This weekly increase in PRT collections has virtually eliminated our dependency on imported platelets on Thursday’s and Friday’s.

Conclusions:

By having the ability to switch most of our platelet collections between PRT / LVDS daily, we reduced our dependency on imported platelets in 2023.  When comparing our 2023 platelet import costs for the first half of 2023 versus the second half of the year, we saw a significant reduction in platelet import expenses.  Savings have continued into 2024.