Back on its feet

When you sell blood platelets and blood plasma to hospitals, and the hospitals start cutting their orders for units of blood, what happens?

Faced with that problem earlier this year, the Inland Northwest Blood Center chose to cut five positions, impose temporary salary reductions and shut its Lewiston office one day a week.

With offices in Spokane, Lewiston, Moses Lake and Coeur d’Alene, the nonprofit agency is the sole provider of donated blood to about 30 regional hospitals.

With hospitals needing about 8 percent less blood compared with a year ago, the center had to take those steps last summer and fall to deal with a budget deficit of about $270,000.

The blood bank, as it’s commonly called, started its reductions in order to meet its budget of $15.9 million, said Executive Director Judi Young.

Its Lewiston office, which had five workers, lost one employee, and now is closed on Thursdays. A bloodmobile arranges offsite blood donations on that day.

All of the remaining 143 blood center workers had to begin paying a $25 contribution toward medical insurance, a first within the blood bank.

Taking action early has put the blood bank back on stable financial footing for 2006. Young estimates the blood bank will end the year with a small surplus of $300,000.

Even though every blood bank worker took a pay cut this year, Young said the changes never impacted the delivery of service to patients and hospitals.

“The community never once had to worry if blood products and services that they have come to depend on for these past 60 years would be available when needed,” she said.

The cuts in hours and operating costs will allow for some employees to see 2 percent pay hikes in 2006, Young said. “Those will be based on performance review,” she added.

All workers had to cut the number of hours worked. That stopped in November. And eight managers who took voluntary pay cuts in the second half of 2005 will see their paychecks return to normal, Young said.

The number of people donating blood, which was down earlier this year, has returned to normal, said Young. The center collects about 130,000 units of blood from volunteers.

She credits public concern after the hurricanes this fall for some of that increase.

“People here saw those disasters and realized they can help. Blood saves lives,” said Young.

But hospital demand still remains about 7 percent lower than in past years, said Young, due in large part to hospitals using blood products more efficiently.

Part of that is a shift from open-heart operations to more use of stents for cardiac patients. Another factor, said Young, is the launch of a heart center in the TriCities. That facility is reducing the number of heart operations occurring in Spokane.