Hospital Highlight: Fraser Health Project Complete

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Meditech 5.6.6 can read phenotype bar code and download results to hospital system 

In August 2011, Canadian Blood Services began a standardized Red Cell Phenotyping Testing Program that printed the phenotype test results on the end label of the red cell unit using the International Society for Blood Transfusion’s ISBT 128 bar code labelling standard.

This excitement of this step forward was somewhat dampened when it was realized that bar code readers at the hospitals could not automatically scan and download phenotype results to the hospital IT system and into the individual red cell record. This challenge resulted in hospitals having to manually enter the phenotype results into their IT systems. Manual entry can result in transcription errors and jeopardize the safety of patient transfusions.

The Fraser Health Authority (FH), located in the southwest of BC, includes 12 acute care hospitals. Each year FH sees an average of 42 babies born daily, 1208 Emergency Department visits, 2065 patients in acute care beds, and 457 patients who have surgery. Every year approximately 37,000 red cells are transfused. 

The task of entering a large number of phenotyped red cells manually into the hospital’s Laboratory Information Services system created the potential for many transcription errors. Staff wanted to take action to prevent transcriptions errors, decrease onsite antigen testing, which totals approximately 5500 tests a year, and leverage existing antigen negative inventory across sites.

To overcome the issues, they implemented a project to enable scanning antigen information from Canadian Blood Services red blood cell (RBC) donor labels into their Laboratory Information Services system (Meditech version 5.66).

The Meditech system needed modifications to the antigen dictionaries to translate the red cell end label phenotype barcode into the antigen field in the hospital computer record for each specific red cell unit. Once modifications were complete and validated, scanning of the red cell end label phenotype barcode made capturing this information easy at the time of red cell receipt. Project implementation at all 12 sites began in June 2017 and included a change in the Meditech menu used to receive red cell units that technologists have embraced.

The next step in leveraging this information is underway with the development of a custom IT report so FH’s entire red cell inventory of can be quickly searched for antigen negative red cell units. This update makes it easier to locate specific antigen negative units in a large site inventory or across sites for easy access to red cells already held in FH inventory.

For further information or to provide comments or suggestions, contact Darlene Mueller, the technical practice lead in transfusion medicine at Fraser Health, Email: darlene.mueller@fraserhealth.ca.