Region History

In 1948, the American Red Cross began collecting blood in Montana as a division of Montana Red Cross chapter operations. Idaho blood collections began in 1949 under the direction of Idaho chapter operations, and later was designated the Snake River Region. In 1993, the two blood services regions were merged and renamed the Lewis and Clark Region, with regional administration based in Boise. In 1997, the Red Cross re-entered the blood services market in Utah, incorporating Utah operations into the Lewis and Clark Region and approximately doubling the capacity of the region.

Organizational Strengths

The Lewis and Clark Region offers:
 an extensive line of blood products, for a variety of patient needs
 a national blood supply inventory management system
 a nationwide transportation to get blood to patients in need, wherever they are
 a physician consultation network
 a rare donor registry
 standardized testing labs
 transfusion medicine research and innovation

Region Resources

The Lewis and Clark Region has
 515 employees (460 full-time equivalents)
 its regional administrative office in Boise
 four administrative offices: Idaho operations office in Boise; Montana operations offices in Great Falls and Missoula; Utah operations office in Salt Lake City
 sixteen fixed collection sites

 capacity for 24 daily mobile operations
 three self-contained bloodmobile buses
 specialized services such as autologous and directed donations, therapeutic services
 three manufacturing facilities
 five distribution facilities
 three reference laboratories, available around the clock
 Hospital Services departments available around the clock

Region Business Operations

In the Lewis and Clark Region:
 we work to maintain at least a three-day blood supply
 we strive to collect about 750 whole blood donations each business day, with approximately 50 percent of those collections as type O
 we schedule 40 percent of our platelet product collections on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday
 our collection goals are more than 190,000 pints of whole blood and 16,787 platelet products in FY04
 we are the primary blood supplier for more than 120 hospitals in our service area
 we offer emergency blood supplies to all hospitals in our service area
 we have contracts to routinely supply blood products to other Red Cross regions, such as southern California
 we transport blood products on an emergency basis to other regions across the nation as patient needs require

The Patients We Serve

In the United States, every two seconds someone needs blood.
In our region, approximately every fifteen minutes someone needs blood.

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National Biomedical Services

American Red Cross Biomedical Services (ARCBS) is the nation's largest blood supplier. Blood collection began in 1941as a volunteer program to provide blood for American and British troops in World War II. The public response was enthusiastic and, after the war, the Red Cross continued to collect blood for civilian domestic use.

The need for blood never ceases. Staff work around the clock to ensure that this need is met. Biomedical Services strives to avoid both shortages of blood and excesses in supply. Tests have been developed to help ensure the safety of the blood supply. Biomedical Services has developed the world’s largest registry of rare blood donors and maintains a frozen supply of rare blood available for immediate shipment across the globe. This registry is tapped daily, responding to more than 1,000 requests each year. The American Red Cross Biomedical Services has the ability to share vast quantities of precious blood resources during shortages or in times of natural disaster.

The Holland Laboratory, located in suburban Maryland, is the largest, most prestigious blood resources lab in the world. Operated by the American Red Cross Biomedical Division, and staffed by world-renowned scientists, the lab oversees dozens of scientific research projects, both basic and applied, to improve the safety, purity, and efficacy of blood.

American Red Cross National Reference Laboratories have been established to help physicians resolve complex serological problems and identify rare blood. Hospital blood bank technologists contact the labs daily to resolve special blood typing issues in order to safely transfuse their patients.

Biomedical Services maintains the ability to support the U.S. military’s need for additional units of blood at a moment’s notice. The Red Cross Inventory Management Hub keeps Red Cross national headquarters aware of immediate and long-term blood shortages and supports the daily shipment of necessary blood supplies.

During World War II, Biomedical Services began to supply plasma to US fighting forces, and continues with a commitment to treat donated blood as a precious source for a wide variety of plasma products to benefit people with hemophilia A and B, immune disorders, and hypoalbuminemia.

Our commitment continues today through our development of a number of medically useful products from a single blood donation. New benefits remain to be discovered and the American Red Cross is in the forefront of such research. New blood components are being isolated and their benefits and uses are being investigated.

In the United States today, blood services regions have been established to carefully screen donors and accept blood donations from community volunteers. At every stage of the process, great care is taken to ensure the suitability of donated blood and plasma for inclusion in our products. The screening process begins with steps to ensure the health and eligibility of all our volunteer donors before they give blood. Utilizing a computerized registry of ineligible donors, all blood donors at every donation are checked against this centralized database to identify an American Red Cross donor who has been deferred.

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