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The Parents Guide to Cord Blood is an impartial Web site created
to provide information and education about cord blood banking and medical research.
The Web site contains a comparison table for different banks as well as a
Suggested Questionnaire for parents to use when choosing a company to store
their babies' cord blood.
http://www.parentsguidecordblood.org
To help make your comparison process easier, we have answered all of the suggested questions below, in addition to our regular Frequently Asked Questions section. We hope that this is useful and will help you understand why StemCyte Family is a different kind of cord blood bank.
The questions are divided into different sections:
- Collection of the Cord Blood Sample
- Shipping and Handling
- Laboratory Testing and Accreditation
- Processing
- Storage Facility
- Company Stability
- Consumer Rights
- Price Protection
{Click on any question below to see the answer.}
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Q: Will the cord blood company actively contact the labor and delivery staff for you - or are parents responsible for keeping them informed and coordinated?
Q: Do they recommend collecting cord blood before or after delivery of the placenta?
Q: What collection method do they use?
Q: What storage method do they use, vials or bags?
Q: What equipment is provided in the collection kit, and are there any spares?
Q: What instruction tools are provided for the physician and delivery staff?
Q: Is the cost of shipping included in the contract?
Q: If the bank uses a courier, do they provide secure chain-of custody handling?
Q: On weekends, is the laboratory staff in-house or on-call?
Q: Will you notify the parents of the time at which the cord blood arrived, and the time at which it was processed?
Q: What tests are performed on maternal blood?
Q: Do you ever reject samples on the basis of maternal tests?
Q: Do you test the cord blood collection for infectious disease markers?
Q: Do you test the cord blood collection for contamination by bacteria, etc.?
Q: Do you ever reject samples that are contaminated?
Q: Will you notify parents of the test results, especially the final cell count?
Q: 8. Do you maintain a separate "quarantine tank" for the long-term storage of blood that has failed one or more tests, or is the blood stored together regardless of testing status?
Q: Do you HLA type the sample?
Q: Some states license cord blood banks (NJ, NY): Do they operate in those states?
Q: By which organizations are they accredited?
Q: Is the blood stored whole or processed to separate mononuclear cells (MNC)?
Q: What is the minimum volume they will accept for storage?
Q: Is the blood stored as a single unit or several samples?
Q: Do you operate your own storage facility or lease space in one? In what type of facility is the bank located?
Q: What is the geographic location of the storage facility?
Q: Are the cord blood samples in a separate freezer or mixed with other medical samples?
Q: What type of freezer do they use?
Q: Do they freeze in liquid nitrogen or vapor nitrogen?
Q: What type of records do parents receive after storage?
Q: Does the contract state that the storage fee is fixed, or may it increase later?
Q: Does the bank reserve the right, in the contract, to change storage facilities?
Q: Is the family cord blood bank a publicly-held or privately-held company?
Q: Is your company affiliated with a hospital or research institution?
Q: Is your company involved in bio-technology research and development?
Q: What other medical services does your company perform?
Q: How long has your company been banking cord blood?
Q: Who directs the day-to-day business of the company?
Q: How many privately banked cord blood samples do you currently hold?
Q: How many transplants have been performed with your cord blood samples?
Q: In the event that the storage company went bankrupt, what would happen to the cord blood samples?
Q: 2. If the cord blood is lost or severely delayed during shipping, what liability does the company accept?
Q: If the storage fee is not paid, what happens to the cord blood?
Q: Does the company take any portion of the cord blood for proprietary purposes, or does 100% go into storage?
Q: Does the storage company reserve any rights in the contract? Example: reserves the right to change the storage facility?
Q: Does the contract protect the privacy of the parents health information, as stipulated by the Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act (HIPAA regulations)?
Q: Is the enrollment fee charged once per family, or for each birth?
Q: At what week of gestation are late enrollment fees imposed, and how much are they?
Q: How do they charge for cord blood samples from multiple births?
Q: If the cord blood collection is small or contaminated, are we offered any refunds?
Q: Is the storage fee guaranteed fixed?
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Hear what families say
about us.
"I banked my first child’s unit with another bank. Four years later, I looked around again and found StemCyte Family™..."
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