A New Blood Portal. A New Blood Donor Experience.
Scheduling and managing appointments for blood donations just got easier for donors and staff at the Nicholas G. Xiarhos Blood Donor Center at Cape Cod Hospital. The Blood Center recently installed new software, called SoftRecruit, that allows donors to schedule and change appointments online and eliminates the need for staff to do it for them.
“The nice feature about SoftRecruit is that it has a donor portal which is available online, where the donor can set up their own account,” said Blood Center Supervisor Lok Tse. “They can track all their prior donations, and their prior health assessments, like blood pressure, hemoglobin, pulse, etc. They can also compare past results to current results, keep track of when they last donated, and much more.”
The new system will also free up time for Blood Center staff. Before the arrival of SoftRecruit, donors would check online blood drives and choose an open slot. An email would then be sent to Tse or Senior Blood Center Recruiter Jonathan DeCoste and they had to manually schedule the donor’s appointment and send them a confirmation email. If the person had to change the appointment, it would again be done via email.
“It was tedious and a lot of extra work,” said Tse. “(SoftRecruit) will make everyone’s life easier and improve the donor experience, while keeping them engaged.”
Blood donations are collected at the Blood Center and at community blood drives, which are held around Cape Cod either inside businesses, church halls, community centers, schools or inside the Blood Center’s fully-equipped bloodmobile.
The Blood Center is in constant need of blood and platelet donations, and the demand is always greater than that which is supplied by donations, Tse said. Currently, the Center receives about 365 donations per month for both Cape Cod Hospital and Falmouth Hospital patients. In order to meet patient needs, they would have to collect more than 500 units per month, he said. The supply that cannot be met by donations has to be purchased from an off-Cape source, he added.
First in the Nation to Implement SoftRecruit’
The SoftRecruit system is made by SCC Soft, which also makes a blood center module, SoftDonor, that the Cape Cod Hospital Blood Center uses. The CCH Blood Bank also uses a SCC module, known as SoftBank, Tse said. While other blood donation sites use SoftRecruit, they are stand-alone systems, he added.
The CCH Blood Center is serving as a test site for SCC to implement SoftRecruit that is interfaced with the SoftDonor system. The benefit to the donor is that they can schedule donations online and also view their health assessments and other information contained in the SoftDonor system, which stand-alone sites cannot offer, he said.
Reminders and Rewards Store
The new SoftRecruit system will send reminder notes to donors about upcoming appointments or setting up new appointments. It also allows people to schedule multiple appointments at one time, so they don’t have to remember throughout the year. Most adults are eligible to donate blood six times a year, according to Tse.
The new online system features a Rewards Store, which will be implemented at a later date. It assigns points to blood donations and platelet donations (a lengthier process, for which the donor will receive more points), he said. With the Rewards Store, donors can accumulate points and redeem them whenever they choose.
Coming in 2023
For now, people who are donating blood at the CCH Blood Center still have to fill out a three-page questionnaire at the donation site (either a blood drive or at the Blood Center), Tse said. Staff then enters the questionnaire information into the Blood Center computer system, SoftDonor. Another staff member then reviews the information to double check its accuracy. “It’s a lot of work,” he said.
But the Blood Center is planning a computer upgrade next year in conjunction with SoftRecruit that will include the electronic questionnaire and will streamline the donation process. Donors will be able to complete the questionnaire through the blood portal within 24 hours of their appointment. Upon completion of the questionnaire, they will receive a bar code sent to their smart phone, which they will present at the time of donation, Tse said.
