Reducing blood product wastage through the inter-hospital redistribution of near-outdate inventory.

Redistributing near-outdate blood products between hospitals is a feasible solution to minimize outdating. Despite heterogeneity of Canadian blood product inventory, all products (each with unique storage and transport requirements) were successfully redistributed in one of two validated and simple containers. Total operation costs of this program were small in comparison to the $17.6 million in savings associated with preventing the discard of outdated products.