Converting from a patchwork of 56 local cottage industry blood banks into a single blood services enterprise to improve safety, increase efficiencies, standardize performance and establish accountability. Developing a single national computer system for databasing donor records, blood products tracking and labeling, clinical evaluations, constant quality assessment and monitoring the nation's blood inventory on a daily basis. Establishing a nationally standardized quality assurance program with several layers of safety. It was too soon. Focusing on the recruitment, training and retention of our 15,000 employees.
People are the key to ensuring quality.
We are bolstering our talent in this humanitarian enterprise, strengthening management, financial and medical expertise. Restructuring our quality systems to more fully integrate system-wide accountability and to reduce errors, with a continual focus on patient and donor well being. This effort will include the ongoing use of third party auditors to ensure regulatory compliance. Generating financial resources to create the blood centers of tomorrow. We will seek philanthropic dollars to protect this national treasure, assure fair pricing to make the enterprise financially sustainable for the long term and enhance operating efficiencies and productivity while ensuring quality.