Worsening shortage of solution for IV procedures alarms hospital officials
TRENTON, N.J. — An ongoing shortage of fluids used to deliver medicine and treat dehydrated patients has hospital workers scrambling in the midst of a nasty flu season. Supplies from factories in storm-ravaged Puerto Rico have been slow to rebound.
Supplies of saline and nutrient solutions were already tight before hurricanes pounded Puerto Rico and cut power to manufacturing plants that make much of the U.S. supply of fluid-filled bags used to deliver sterile solutions to patients.
Flu season has turned out to be a bad one and it came early, bringing patients in need of fluids into hospitals already running low.
Hospital officials, pharmacists and other staff have been devising alternatives and workarounds, training doctors and nurses on new procedures and options, and hitting the phones to try to secure fluids from secondary suppliers.
“If we can’t support patients coming in emergency rooms who have the flu, more people are going to die,” predicts Deborah Pasko, director of medication safety and quality at the American Society of Health System Pharmacists, a professional group. “I see it as a crisis.”
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said last week it believes shortages will start to ease over the next few weeks, but stressed “the production situation in Puerto Rico remains fragile.”
Puerto Rico’s power grid is being slowly restored and the last of three Baxter International factories there that make saline bags and nutrient solutions was reconnected just before Christmas. But intermittent power outages are still slowing Baxter’s efforts to get back to full production. Only a few other companies make those solutions.
Some hospital officials say the severity of shortages stabilized over the holidays, when elective surgeries and other services drop, but others say shortages are worsening.
Several noted syringe supplies are running low because many patients are now getting injections instead of IV drips.