Tara and I recently presented some cool data at the annual meeting of the California Blood Bank Society.

At the average 100 unit blood drive, 12 to 16 donors will be temporarily deferred. Of temporary deferrals, 60-70% are for one reason–low iron. And most of those donors are women in their child-bearing years.

We asked blood center executives and medical directors a pointed question–how many of those donors will return, to try again within the next two months?

Not a single attendee could even guess at an answer to that question!

Or next query was most telling. We asked each CBBS attendee to describe the process their blood center employs to coach temporarily deferred donors back into the blood program, on terms which ensure they’ll qualify.

That query only ended in blank stares and scratched heads! Not a single blood center executive or medical director could relate an established, detailed process!

Which begs the question–which major manufacturer would be satisfied with preventable productivity leakage of 12 to 16%? And what for-profit manufacturer wouldn’t have a plan in place to recapture these “lost resources” once they were again eligible to qualify?

With the right coaching, most temporarily deferred donors will give again. According to our pilot programs and research, however, the unintended last message temporary deferrals at busy blood drives feel they most often receive from your staff are the Three Unacceptable Un-words–deferred donors leave feeling not only Unhealthy and Unqualified, but also Unwanted!

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