Mayo Medical Laboratories and NDSC collaborate to develop new patient blood-management solution

Aug 19 2018

Mayo Clinic implemented a patient blood-management program in 2010 on its Rochester campus and has since experienced a 35-percent reduction of blood transfusions, improving patient outcomes and achieving significant savings. Using best practices from the program, Mayo Medical Laboratories, the global reference laboratory of Mayo Clinic, collaborated with National Decision Support Company (NDSC) to combine Mayo's clinical knowledge with NDSC's industry-leading expertise in electronic health record (EHR) clinical-decision support.

Together, Mayo Medical Laboratories and National Decision Support Company have developed a new patient blood-management solution called CareSelect Blood. The program will assist health care providers with the appropriate utilization of blood products, improving patient care and reducing costs.

"With blood being a finite and expensive resource, we need to practice proper stewardship to prevent overuse," says Daryl Kor, M.D., an anesthesiologist and medical director of Patient Blood Management at Mayo Clinic. "Current studies indicate that 40 to 60 percent of transfusions are deemed unnecessary or avoidable."*

About CareSelect Blood CareSelect Blood features 100 curated transfusion guidelines that are authored and maintained by Mayo Clinic. The platform leverages data from more than 740,000 individual transfusion events. These guidelines can be integrated into a health care organization's EHR within the physician's workflow to ensure proper ordering.

CareSelect Blood also offers consulting services. "We have subject matter experts who will visit the health care organization to provide on-site training, review analytics and reports, and discuss the evidence-based transfusion guidelines," says Dr. Kor. "This program can be customized to a hospital's specific needs and tailored to various personas within an organization -; for example, surgery, nursing or the laboratory."

"The problem is this: too many transfusions, too much waste and an increased probability of adverse outcomes," says Michael Mardini, CEO of National Decision Support Company. "By expanding our relationship with Mayo Medical Laboratories, we're able to reduce variation of care, provide reliable standards and report data needed to improve performance. This can lead to improved population health, increased provider efficiency and lower cost of care."

Mayo Medical Laboratories and NDSC In 2017, Mayo Medical Laboratories and National Decision Support Company co-developed CareSelect Lab, a decision-support platform that aggregates clinical knowledge and provides real-time test-ordering guidance to physicians, addressing common areas of test misutlization.

"Mayo Medical Laboratories and NDSC continue to find ways to improve health care for providers and their patients," adds Mardini. "With our CareSelect Blood and CareSelect Lab solutions, we have designed programs that address many of the main concerns of health care institutions when it comes to patient care, health insurance costs and the wasteful use of resources."