Background: Patient Blood Management (PBM) is an evidence-based approach in surgery and emergency care which aims to minimize the risk for blood loss and the need for blood replacement for each patient through a coordinated multidisciplinary care process before, during, and after surgery. In combination with blood loss, anemia is the main driver for transfusion and an independent risk factor for adverse outcomes including morbidity and mortality. Hence, identifying and correcting anemia as well as minimizing blood loss are important pillars of PBM. Evidence demonstrates that PBM significantly improves outcomes and safety while reducing cost by macroeconomic magnitudes. Despite its huge potential to improve healthcare systems, PBM is not yet adopted broadly. The aim of this study is to analyze the collective experiences of a diverse group of PBM implementors across countries reflecting different healthcare contexts and to use these experiences to develop a guidance for initiating and orchestrating PBM implementation for stakeholders from diverse professional backgrounds.
Methods: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 1-4 PBM implementors from 12 countries in Asia, Latin America, Australia, Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. Responses reflecting the drivers, barriers, measures, and stakeholders regarding the implementation of PBM were summarized per country, and key observations extracted. By clustering the levels of intervention for PBM implementation, a PBM implementation framework was created and populated.
Results: A set of PBM implementation measures were extracted from the interviews with the implementors. Most of these measures relate to one of six levels of implementation including government, healthcare providers, funding, research, training/education, and patients/public. Essential cross-level measures are multi-stakeholder communication and collaboration.
Conclusion: This implementation framework helps to decompose the complexity of PBM implementation into concrete measures on each implementation level. It provides guidance for diverse stakeholders to independently initiate and develop strategies to make PBM a national standard of care, thus closing current practice gaps and matching this unmet public health need.