photo by: Lauren Fox

Anthony DeFilippo gave blood March 26, 2020, at a blood drive at Immanuel Lutheran Church.

Amid a blood shortage affecting hospital systems at both the state and national levels, LMH Health is not experiencing a crisis right now — but without an uptick in donors, some worst-case scenarios could be realized.

According to a Jan. 18 release from the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, blood shortages can severely affect patient care in hospitals. That release also noted that the American Red Cross has declared the current blood shortage as the worst in more than a decade, with less than a one-day supply of critical blood types.

Though it’s not yet at dire levels locally, the blood shortage is an issue that health care professionals at LMH Health are well aware of and are still affected by. LMH Health Blood Bank Supervisor Faith Friesen said the hospital system’s supplier is the Community Blood Center of Kansas City, which as recently as December announced that its local blood supply had dropped to a one- to two-day inventory, well below the ideal inventory of seven days.

As a result, Friesen said, LMH Health has received some guidance from the Community Blood Center to help mitigate the issue.

“They’re telling us things like ‘Don’t keep transfusing in hopeless cases,’ which that’s a decision that somebody has to make other than the blood bank,” Friesen said. “Here, it has to be a provider somewhere making that decision — ‘This case is hopeless, there’s no point in transfusing this patient any longer.'”

Transfusions also have a different threshold for taking place than they previously did. Friesen said a patient’s “hemoglobin trigger level” now has to be lower than it used to be for a transfusion to be on the table.

Along with having to make difficult decisions in cases involving transfusions, Friesen said they’ve also been advised to break from the more typical protocol of ordering more units of blood at one time for a patient. Instead, there’s been a shift to ordering a single unit of blood and then reevaluating to see if more is necessary, she said.

Friesen said LMH has been fortunate so far.

“We are pretty lucky,” Friesen said. “We haven’t had a lot of days where we’ve ordered blood where they’ve said ‘We can’t send it.'”

There have been some days, though. Friesen pointed to an order in December when the Community Blood Center could provide only half of the requested order of type O-negative blood. Prior to that, there were issues related to blood shortages last year in August and May. It’s been a challenge for a while now, Friesen said, especially right after the coronavirus pandemic started in early 2020.

Another element from early on in the pandemic that contributed to the shortage was hesitation in blood donors to go out in public to donate. Plus, some events were shut down outright because of COVID-19 protocols, including LMH Health’s first donation drive after the pandemic started, Friesen said.

On top of that, the local donor base takes a hit when there’s a high number of COVID-19 cases in the community. Friesen said COVID-positive individuals can’t donate, which temporarily eliminates a chunk of potential donors.

Friesen said the best way to ensure that the situation doesn’t worsen in Douglas County is to boost local blood donations.

There are opportunities to do so through LMH Health; it hosts blood drives every other month at both the main hospital campus and at LMH West. Friesen said the Community Blood Center requires its staff to be vaccinated, which she said hopefully helps donors feel safer about going to give blood. Friesen encouraged those interested in making a donation to make an appointment, to help comply with social distancing.

LMH Health did report a record turnout at its Jan. 6 and Jan. 7 blood drives, resulting in 153 pints.

However, getting younger generations more involved as regular donors would also be an important step, Friesen stressed. On that front, there’s a two-day drive set to take place at Allen Fieldhouse Feb. 8-9, hosted by Kansas Athletics in partnership with the Community Blood Center.

If donations don’t continue to improve as needed to lessen the severity of the shortage, Friesen outlined a pair of alarming scenarios that could come about in the event that the shortage begins to have a more significant impact on Douglas County.

Friesen said she has seen discussion among health care workers at other hospital systems about being forced to choose which patients to give blood to. It would create a “scary” situation in Douglas County if that sort of decision-making has to take place here, she said, because 60% to 70% of LMH Health’s blood bank goes to cancer patients.

“They’re going through a lot already with that treatment, and you never want to think that you might have to tell them, ‘Sorry, we don’t have blood for you,'” Friesen said. “I wouldn’t want to be the person that has to tell them that.”

Another possible scenario, Friesen said, is getting caught with a “massive transfusion event” — a gunshot wound, a car accident or gastrointestinal bleeding, for example — and going through 20 units of blood in a matter of a few hours. It’s impossible to predict when LMH Health might see a patient requiring that care, she said, and that unpredictability could leave the hospital without any way to replenish its supply of blood.

Besides donating, Friesen said her other suggestion for helping to avoid the effects of a dire local blood shortage and its impact on the hospital was simple: Continue to practice responsible COVID-19 mitigation habits like wearing a mask, practicing social distancing and getting vaccinated and boosted.