Olympus BloodTrack improves patient safety at the Royal Bournemouth and Christchurch Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

The Royal Bournemouth and Christchurch Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has significantly improved patient safety with an electronic blood tracking system from Olympus. The Olympus BloodTrack system provides full end-to-end control and audit of the blood transfusion process with correct cross checking of the patient’s barcoded wristband with the blood at the bedside. This has enabled the Trust to achieve 100% compliance with NPSA (National Patient Safety Agency) guidelines for patient identification.

Prior to the EU Blood Safety Directive 20051 becoming adopted into UK law, the Trust undertook an audit of its then paper-based transfusion process to find only 70% of transfusion records were available in patients’ case-notes. Consequently the Trust sought to amend the process to ensure the 100% traceability requirements of the Directive were met.

In addition to meeting traceability requirements, the Trust’s staff and patients alike are also benefitting from a more efficient process and reduced blood sample rejection and re-bleed rates. “The Olympus Blood Track system is a tried and tested solution with an excellent support network and is by far the best system available,” said Helen Howlett, IT Project Manager at the Trust. “It’s proved itself to be an extremely robust solution ensuring that the right blood is always given to the right patient at the right time.”

BloodTrack uses a Positive Patient Identification (PPI) system which consists of modular software packages using 2-dimensional barcoding and wireless Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs). The wireless technology ensures any non conformities are alerted in real-time directly back to the laboratory, whilst an audible alarm is sounded if the barcode labelled blood does not match the patient’s barcoded wristband. “In addition this system is ensuring complete accountability from all personnel involved in the transfusion process. We can now stop any potential problem immediately in its tracks, which is of course crucial for patient safety,” added Helen Howlett.

Since all labels are now demand printed via the PDA following patient wristband and staff identification badge scanning, laboratory sample rejection rates during the cross matching process are now minimal. “Previously we had a 10% sample rejection rate due to illegible hand writing on sample labels, we now have a 4% rate which means we rarely have to re-bleed patients and ensures a highly efficient process,” said Helen Howlett. “Demand printing also adds an extra level of safety due to a 15 second timeout on the PDA. Labels can only be printed at the bedside of one patient at a time thereby ensuring no opportunity for cross matching errors.”

The introduction of the new Blood Track system was extremely rapid with go live across two hospital sites and 42 wards taking just five months. “We underestimated how easy it would be to introduce the new system. This was partly due to BloodTrack and Olympus personnel, but also because we had the right team working and people within the Trust to facilitate positive change management,” explained Helen Howlett. “The wristband and id badge system alongside Blood Track has been adopted so successfully because it makes patient care simpler, quicker and safer. In fact nurses are already finding additional applications for the ID Badge / wristband system, such as blood glucose monitoring.”

It is also anticipated that future financial savings may be made by virtually eliminating blood wastage through controlled and monitored access to blood stock and tracking its movement around the Trust. Using BloodTrack’s electronic issue functionality at other Trust’s hospital sites has reduced blood usage in some areas by 20%. In addition, the use of the system may ultimately enable the freeing up of nursing staff currently involved in the transfusion process for other key tasks.