ROCHESTER — For a typical Mayo Clinic remote blood drive, delivery staff are getting set up sometime after 6:30 a.m. The first donor is usually in a chair at 8 a.m.
A new bloodmobile will streamline the process.
A converted Matthews bus will carry all the equipment and staff needed for a remote blood drive. The Mayo Clinic blood donor program has been holding on-location blood collection for decades.
“We’re always looking for anything we can do to make it more convenient and easier to donate,” said Adam Stewart, marketing and recruitment coordinator with the Mayo Clinic Blood Donor Program.
Until now, a delivery crew and technicians are needed to move chairs, metal carts of equipment into place to set up each remote blood drive.
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“This helps us make that process so much more seamless,” Stewart said of the bloodmobile.
“Instead of taking what you see here and wheeling it inside, we just drive up,” he said.
Blood donor staff tested the mobile unit at the Hilton Building last week. On Wednesday and Thursday, the bloodmobile was used to collect blood donations at Rochester Community and Technical College.
A blood donation collection schedule is available at mayoclinic.org/blood-donor-program/minnesota . Information about setting up a donation is also available at the site.
The unveiling of the bloodmobile comes less than a month after Mayo Clinic put out a call for blood donations due to low supplies.
It takes about 100 blood donors per day to maintain the community's blood supply, said Dr. Justin Juskewitch, associate medical director of the Mayo Clinic Blood Donor Program.
“ The new Mayo Clinic Bloodmobile gives blood donors in our communities another opportunity to donate blood,” Juskewitch added.
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