Abstract
Two major issues of the blood bank management are quality assurance and inventory control. Recently, in Korea blood donation has gained popularity increasingly to allow considerable improvement of the quality assurance with respect to blood collection, transportation, storage, component preparation skills and hematological tests. Nevertheless the inventory control, the other issue of blood bank management, has been neglected so far. For the supply of blood by donation barely meets the demand, the blood bank policy on the inventory control has been 'the more the better.' The shortage itself by no means unnecessitate inventory control. In fact, in spite of shortage, no small amount of blood is outdated. The efficient blood inventory control makes it possible to economize the blood usage in the practice of state-of-the-art medical care. For the efficient blood inventory control in Korean hospitals, this tudy is to develop formulae forecasting the standard blood inventory level and suggest a set of policies improving the blood inventory control. For this study informations of $A^+$ whole bloods and packed cells inventory control were collected from a University Hospital and the Central Blood Bank of the Korean Red Cross. Using this informations, 1,461 daily blood inventory records were formulated.48 varieties of blood inventory control environment were identified on the basis of selected combinations of 4 inventory control variables-crossmatch, transfusion, inhospital donation and age of bloods from external supply. In order to decide the optimal blood inventory level for each environment, simulation models were designed to calculate the measures of performance of each environment. After the decision of 48 optimal blood inventory levels, stepwise multiple regression analysis was started where the independent variables were 4 inventory control variables and the dependent variable was optimal inventory level of each environment. Finally the standard blood inventory level decision rule was developed using the backward elimination procedure to select the best regression equation. And the effective alternatives of the issuing policy and crossmatch release period were suggested according to the measures of performance under the condition of the standard blood inventory level. The results of this study' were as follows ; 1. The formulae to calculate the standard blood inventory level($S^*$)was $S^*=2.8617X(d)^{0.9342}$ where d is the mean daily crossmatch(demand) for a blood type. 2. The measures of performace - outdate rate, average period of storage, mean age of transfused bloods, and mean daily available inventory level - were improved after maintenance of the standard inventory level in comparison with the present system. 3. Issuing policy of First In-First Out(FIFO) decreased the outdate rate, while Last In-First Out(LIFO) decreased the mean age of transfused bloods. The decrease of the crossmatch release period reduced the outdate rate and the mean age of transfused bloods.