Officials from the primary blood service supplier for Bellingham’s lone hospital have signaled the alert of potential shortages as the COVID-19 pandemic nears the two-year anniversary.
Executives at Bloodworks Northwest, which serves Western Washington and Oregon, said more blood donations are needed for their hospitals, including PeaceHealth St. Joseph Medical Center, as the coronavirus omicron variant wanes.
“If we don’t have the supply, that means they don’t either,” said Vicki Finson, a Bloodworks Northwest executive. “There’s a lot of triaging, a lot of reviewing of orders, a lot of collaboration between our medical teams and the hospital’s medical teams, and some delays in transfusion.”
Despite the situation, St. Joseph Medical Center physicians said they’ve made do.
“We’ve never gone into what I call a crisis where we’ve run out,” St. Joseph trauma surgeon Robert Rush said. “Everybody who needs blood gets it.”
Healthcare officials are trying to encourage an increase in donations with more people suffering injuries from vehicle crashes as they spend more time on the roads as infection rates drop.
According to a New York Times analysis of federal data, vehicle deaths rose 17.5% per capita from the summer of 2019 to last summer. The Times said it was the largest two-year increase since just after World War II.
The potential for greater demand has come at a time donation sites have limited capacity because of staff shortages and some people’s concerns over gathering with others, officials said. Also, many employees who resigned during the COVID-19 pandemic have not returned.
“It’s going to take us some months to regain our staffing levels to where they need to be,” Finson said.
The inventory at Bloodworks Northwest has partially recovered from alarmingly low rates in January, she said. But the supply varies day to day, Finson added, and the blood bank has only 50% of the four-day supply it strives to have.
The low inventory has forced Whatcom County healthcare workers to adapt.
St. Joseph Medical Center doesn’t get all the units it requests every day, said Carol Wendt, the hospital’s Transfusion Service Supervisor. But hospital staff have worked effectively with what they have, she added.
“Having enough to get by until we can get more products up here is always a small worry, but we coordinate with our surgeons and our docs and our ER docs,” Wendt said. “We make it work the best way we can.”
Still, she said, the hospital always has “a need for blood, every single day.”
Bloodworks Northwest’s Finson said it takes about an hour to donate blood.
“And when you walk out the door, you’ll know that you literally saved someone’s life and that is pretty powerful,” she said.
Donors can sign up online for appointments to give at Bloodworks Northwest in Bellingham.
