Five pounds off the price of each bag of blood, the highest number of organs donated and a new 10-year strategy for stem cells, were just three of the achievements delivered by NHS Blood and Transplant (NHSBT) in the past year.
The NHSBT annual review 2010-11 details delivery against four key objectives covering a broad range of activity which all help to save and improve patients’ lives. Achievements in 2010-11 include:
• Reducing the blood price to just under £125 a unit through efficiency savings while maintaining quality and safety, building on a price reduction to £130 per unit in 2009-10.
• Sustained growth in the rate of blood collected per member of staff up by 22% in the past three years.
• Improved sufficiency in the blood supply, reducing the number of days where stock levels fell below acceptable levels from 87 in 2007-8 to only two in 2010-11.
• Increased productivity in blood testing by 35% and in blood processing by 50% since April 2008, on track to achieve European top quartile performance levels in both areas by the end of 2011/12.
• Improvements in managing the safety of blood and blood products by introducing bacterial screening and improving new test assessments at no additional cost.
• Delivery of organs for 3,740 transplants in the UK the sixth year on year growth in the number of transplants.
• Increase in the number of deceased organ donors to over 1,000, another new record with consent rates from families for organ donation following brain death rising from 61% in 2009/10 to 65% in 2010/11.
• Leading delivery of the first UK-wide 10- year stem cell transplant strategy, endorsed by all four UK governments, with recommendations to save an extra 200 lives each year including increasing the number of umbilical cord blood units banked in the UK and improving the performance of UK based stem cell registries.
• One thousand more patients received a heart valve, tendon or other tissue transplant than the previous year.
