How blood culture kitting enhances laboratory efficiency

As the gold standard in healthcare for diagnosing and monitoring dangerous bloodstream infections, the number of blood cultures conducted annually in the United States has been reported to be over 30 million¹ and as high as 58 million.² Blood draws for culture are primarily performed in hospitals, laboratories, and physician offices — with mobile and non-acute setting collection services currently on the rise.

Blood collection is crucial in patient care in every healthcare setting, with more and more providers recognizing blood culture kitting as a key strategy to improve patients’ experiences and outcomes,  lower contamination rates,³ and promote clinical efficiency.

Lowering contamination rates, increasing efficiency, and reducing waste

Contamination and false positives in blood culture are persistent problems in healthcare.  Inaccurate blood culture results can lead to delayed treatment or unnecessary antibiotic therapy, more procedures, longer lengths of hospital stays and even increased infection or harm to patients — all translating into additional healthcare costs. 

Blood culture kitting simplifies decision-making, reduces touchpoint contamination, and decreases variation in practice by providing clinicians with a pre-loaded kit that contains all the components required for sample collection. Using kits also supports systems’ evidence-based collection protocols.   

Standardization provided by kitting allows clinician and technicians — regardless of discipline, level of experience, or newness to a role or hospital system — to focus on patient care and clean collection practices versus supply gathering and tracking. Clinicians that use kits know they have the right materials (and the correct amount) needed to do proper blood collection, minimizing trips back-and-forth to the supply area during collection.

Kit development process

Discussions about developing or procuring blood culture kits are typically triggered when a lab or system experiences an increase in blood culture contamination rates; when costs for collection materials are incongruent with numbers of tests performed; or, when labs or systems are looking for areas to improve quality and delivery of care overall. Kitting can also support staffing issues like staff shortages, burnout, and safety.

A good practice when launching a blood culture kitting project is for the laboratory to lead and invite representation from all the disciplines and departments that use or may be involved in procuring a blood culture kit, i.e., nursing, phlebotomy, perioperative, infection prevention, supply chain, materials management, and other stakeholders. Build off of your organization’s evidence-based practices around blood culture collection and examine current and potential industry compliance standards. Assess your organization’s quality initiatives, gathering benchmarks and establishing metrics against which success of the kitting project will be measured. Metrics can include blood culture contamination rate, kit utilization, and staff feedback.

For stakeholders who may evaluate kitting projects solely on increased costs, it is a good idea to break down how kitting costs compare to the time and resources spent pulling single-sterile items for every blood culture, addressing contamination issues impacting patient care along with re-doing work-ups, and accounting for supply waste generated by clinician error. Stakeholders may be interested in recent data indicating that using blood culture collection kits lowered both contamination rates and costs,³ resulting in an annual net savings of nearly $500,000.³ And, costs of one contaminated blood culture event have been estimated to be between $4,000 and $10,000.⁴

Keep in mind that building a blood culture kit goes a long way in supporting or reinforcing your organization’s sterility and aseptic techniques and protocols across all points of care.

Item selection

One effective, hands-on exercise for kit building is to bring groups — by disciplines, divisions and care settings — into a space displaying all the available options for the various components required for blood culture collection. Then, assign each team to build the “ideal” blood culture kit and compare the results. Identifying which items each group prefers or passes over, after handling the actual items, can be an indicator of the cost-effectiveness of including certain items in a kit and sets up a good-better-best scenario on proposed kits.

This exercise can identify any variation of technique in disciplines and can ultimately streamline best practices and eliminate the question of “what-do I-grab” for clinicians. In some systems, this exercise may reveal that more efficiency can be realized by developing more than one kit. For example, a blood culture kit for nurses may need to be different than a kit for phlebotomists.

Common blood culture kit items include needle, tourniquet, sterile blood culture bottles, antiseptic skin prep, disinfectant for the materials, and gloves. Including updated technology in kits for blood culture collection — such as blood diversion devices, diversion tubes and retractable safety needles — can also promote adoption and utilization of the safer collection components.

Conclusion

When effectively implemented and supported by continuous education and awareness among all staff, blood culture kitting can enhance patient outcomes and boost efficiency by optimizing workflows and minimizing waste.

Hospital labs rely on quality specimen collection to accurately diagnose patients. Sample contamination can lead to adverse events for the patient and facility. Collection kits are an efficient tool for standardizing collection processes and driving best practice that can lead to improved results.

References

1. Liaquat S, Baccaglini L, Haynatzki G, Medcalf SJ, Rupp ME. Patient-specific risk factors contributing to blood culture contamination. Antimicrob Steward Healthc Epidemiol. 2022;2(1):e46. doi:10.1017/ash.2022.22.
2. Large-scale, peer-reviewed study quantifies multiple devastating patient harms associated with blood culture contamination and most significantly, a 74% increase in risk of in-hospital patient mortality. Magnolia Medical Technologies. January 24, 2023. Accessed May 16, 2025. https://magnolia-medical.com/news/large-scale-peer-reviewed-study-quantifies-multiple-devastating-patient-harms-associated-with-blood-culture-contamination-and-most-significantly-a-74-increase-in-risk-of-in-hospital-patient-mortalit/#.
3. Self WH, Talbot TR, Paul BR, Collins SP, Ward MJ. Cost analysis of strategies to reduce blood culture contamination in the emergency department: sterile collection kits and phlebotomy teams. Infect Control Hosp Epidemiol. 2014;35(8):1021-1028. doi:10.1086/677161.
4. Garcia RA, Spitzer ED, Beaudry J, et al. Multidisciplinary team review of best practices for collection and handling of blood cultures to determine effective interventions for increasing the yield of true-positive bacteremias, reducing contamination, and eliminating false-positive central line-associated bloodstream infections. Am J Infect Control. 2015;43(11):1222-37. doi: 10.1016/j.ajic.2015.06.030.