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Hospitals find other ways to deliver medicine amid IV bag shortage


Auburn85

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https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/nation-now/2018/01/14/iv-bag-shortage-puerto-rico/1032369001/

 

As hospitals across the country cope with a bad flu season, they also must figure out how to deliver some medicines without an important tool of the trade, the intravenous fluid bag.

Hurricane Maria’s destruction of Puerto Rico, the key American manufacturing hub for medical supplies, triggered a months-long shortage in hospital essentials, especially IV fluids. Just as federal officials projected the shortage to ease, hospitals started seeing a spike in flu patients. 

"It's unprecedented to have this kind of large-scale, nationwide drug shortage of such a basic item in U.S. health care," said Chief Pharmacist John Armitstead at Lee Health in Fort Myers, Fla. "So it's quite dramatic."

IV saline fluids in their ubiquitous plastic bags and tubes are a convenient way to deliver medication to a patient through an intravenous needle, allowing gravity to do the work and freeing nurses for other tasks. They are also used to hydrate patients. 

Behind the scenes, hospital pharmacy departments have devised ways to reserve the 25-to-100 milliliter saline bags for use in patients whose condition requires them and adopt viable substitute procedures when possible.

In most instances, patients do not even realize the situation — and that’s what hospital staff strive to do.

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It's bad. My wife is a clinical pharmacist. She was telling me last night that they've started administering drugs via syringe instead of IV bags, but now they are running out of syringes. 

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7 hours ago, Barnacle said:

It's bad. My wife is a clinical pharmacist. She was telling me last night that they've started administering drugs via syringe instead of IV bags, but now they are running out of syringes. 

It’s not been fun for our pharmacy department. Practically all of our patients are on full isolation too, so we’re running through a ton of gowns, gloves and masks. Think I go through 2 dozen gowns and masks and 100gloves every damn day right now, and I’m just a clinical eng. 

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My company offered Baxter a replacement for PVC, which is what IV bags are made of.  

After promising they would convert to it we were technically successful, they stiffed us when we were.  See, the thing is, they make their own PVC film/bags and weren't willing to pay a supplier a few cents for a better alternative.   

PVC works very well, but there is a dirty little secret (for those outside the industry) associated with it.  It's full of a plasticizer (DHEP) than can leach into the contents of the bad - and therefore the body. 

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