The Blood Bank of Delaware/Eastern Shore hasn't had a critical blood shortage in 25 years.
It's operated a blood assurance program for 45 years that urges individuals or families to join the blood bank for $5 a year. A member's turn to donate comes up every 18 to 24 months. At that time, folks have three options -- donate blood themselves; provide a replacement donor, such as a relative or friend; or pay $30 for a unit of blood.
It works because the 18 hospitals in the area have a separate charge for blood replacement, which no longer exists in most regions of the country, said David Bonk, the Delaware bank's marketing director.
"We're essentially insuring our members for the cost of blood replacement," he said. "But it's extremely difficult or perhaps impossible to start elsewhere. It's unlikely other blood programs can get their hospitals to agree to change to a system like ours."
Until the mid-1970s, most U.S. hospitals charged a replacement fee or asked patients and their families to replace the blood they used. This replenished blood supplies, but it put a burden on families at a difficult time. It was also expensive and involved a lot of paperwork for hospitals, Bonk said. Many donor recruitment programs were based on this "individual responsibility."
Nowadays, most blood programs have abandoned replacement programs in favor of "community responsibility."
With the Delaware system, 14 to 16 percent of the eligible population in that region donates, Bonk said. That compares with 8 percent in the Pittsburgh area. The Delaware blood bank also covers 450,000 of the 1.2 million in its service area. Western Pennsylvania has 2.5 million people, but roughly only 110,000 of them donate each year for Central Blood Bank.
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