Partnership between a Large Academic Medical Center and Blood Supplier to Maintain the Blood Supply during the Initial Covid19 Outbreak in the United States (US)

Background/Case Studies: Due to physical distancing measures implemented in March 2020 to mitigate the spread of the COVID-19, over 4,000 community blooddrives were cancelled resulting in more than 100,000 fewer blood units collected in the US during the initial outbreak (1) Here we describe a successful partnership between a large academic medical center and a major blood provider to help prevent a critical blood shortage in our community Study Design/Methods: Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC), a large academic medical center including the only level I trauma center in metropolitan Nashville, Tennessee, partnered with the American Red Cross (ARC) to increase the number of blood drives on-campus with hospital leadership support to overcome administrative and logistical barriers quickly with increased media communications to faculty and staff through the hospital media team Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, oncampus blood drives averaged twice per month, but in March of 2020, our teams were able to increase oncampus blood drives to 2 to 3 times weekly safely and in compliance with guidelines recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) The number of whole blood units collected during comparable months in 2018, 2019 and 2020 were compared Results/Findings: From March through July of 2018, ten blood drives were held yielding a total of 212 units of whole blood From March through July of 2019, ten blood drives were held yielding a total of 249 units of whole blood From March through July 12 of 2020, 41 blood drives were held yielding a total of 1,167 units of whole blood (see Table 1) Whole blood units collected from March 1 to July 12, 2020 increased 550% compared with March to July 2018 on-campus Conclusions: During the initial COVID-19 pandemic outbreak in the United States, the blood supply was severely threatened due to mass cancellations of donor blood drives We demonstrated a very successful partnership between a large academic medical center and a major blood provider to substantially increase the frequency of on-campus blood drives which resulted in a significant increase in the number of whole blood units collected compared with prior years Hospital leadership and media team support to overcome many logistical and administrative barriers was key to quickly implementing blood drives on-campus and increasing donor turnout