Estudio de los costes de las convocatorias dirigidas a donantes de sangre

Abstract

Effective communication is essential to stop the decline in blood donations. The aim of this study was to determinethe efficacy of SMS, electronic and postal mail to promote drives for whole blood (WB) donations, as well as thecommunication channel providing greater savings.During a period of 36 months (January 2013-December 2015), 31,358 donors were contacted from a list of 33,745registered donors in the province of Huelva. The Huelva Blood Transfusion Center deployed seven unique orcombined channels of communication to call potential donors, however, this study only focused on three uniqueand exclusive media, which accounted for the transmission of 147,822 SMS, 106,746 letters and 12,478 e-mails.The percentage of donors making successful donations was calculated for each channel, and possible differenceswere determined by the Chi-squared test for comparison of proportions. Likewise, the relevant average unit cost foreach single channel was calculated.Of the 20,696 donors contacted via the three unique communication channels, 8,329 (40.24%) presented to makea WB donation. The call to potential donors whose preference was SMS was most effective, with 67.33% of thosecontacted showing up to give blood, while 54.62% and 17.30% did so following contact by e-mail and letter,respectively. The mean number of blood donations per donor during the study period was higher among thosecontacted by SMS (3.22). The channel that supposed more saving was the email, with a zero cost, followed by theSMS with a cost of 0.0475 €.Communications in the form of SMS are a more effective way to recruit potential donors than via postal or electronicmail. Since, in the case of Spain, 92.6% of the population has mobile phone, it is necessary to raise the gradualabandonment of communication through letters, most expensive option, and adopt SMS as a communication bydefault.