Re-examining blood use to improve quality care.

With escalating costs and restrictions on who can donate blood, the issue of blood use among health care facilities has managed to attract recent headlines. The basic concerns over blood use, availability, safety, and quality are not necessarily new or unique in this day and age. However, finding better ways to meet these ongoing challenges--through better standardization and improved data--have been slower in coming than in other sectors of the health care arena. But, times are changing. Examples are emerging of what can be done by hospitals, health systems, health plans, and other providers to achieve quality care--even when faced with limited supplies of blood and blood products. And, with the tensions arising between supply and demand, hospitals also are beginning to pay closer attention to bloodless--or transfusion-free--medicine and surgery.