Model for blood collections management.

BACKGROUND A typical blood bank gets its major supply of blood from organizing blood donation camps. The quantity of blood collected in the blood donation drives is random and it might be sensible to cut off the supply at some level to reduce the wastages by overcollection. STUDY DESIGN AND METHODS In this paper we introduce two new cutoff level policies and compare their performance with the policy of collecting all the available supply at blood collection drives, which is quite prevalent among the blood banks. We develop a simulation model for collection that enables such comparison on the basis of shortages, wastages, and total costs. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION The results obtained from the simulation model for a real-life situation show that the cutoff level policies are better than the unrestricted collection policy in controlling total costs. They also result in less wastage in the system for a given level of shortages.