Quality Council of India's National Accreditation Board for Hospitals & Healthcare Providers (NABH) has pioneered accreditation of blood banks and assessment of their quality and operational systems. The NABH standard for blood banks which was first released in 2007 has been revised and from 2013 the 2nd edition is applicable.
While the NABH website only lists 66 accredited blood banks against the 2500+ blood banks in our country, there is an increasing push towards accreditation from all involved in blood banking and consequently more institutions are exploring the option of getting themselves accredited. Once the organisation takes a final decision to get accreditation, it still takes considerable time to get things in right shape. A good move for all blood banks would be to voluntarily adopt the best practices as mandated by the accreditation board, not just because it will make the task of seeking accreditation easier but also because these practices are likely to positively impact the overall functioning of these blood banks.
An interesting starting point seems to be the ten 'Quality Indicators' defined by NABH. NABH encourages all blood banks to capture these indicators. The importance attached to these indicators can be gauged by the fact that out of these ten, first five Indicators have been mandated for accredited blood bank to monitor and report to NABH every six months.
We share with you these indicators with hope that more blood banks will get a head start by early adoption of these indicators.
