Hospitals around the country are conserving critical intravenous fluid supplies to cope with a shortage that may last months. Some hospital administrators say they are changing how they think about IV fluid hydration altogether. Hurricane Helene, which hit North Carolina in September, wrecked a Baxter International facility that produces 60% of the IV fluids used in the U.
S., according to the American Hospital Association. The company was forced to stop production and is rationing its products.
In an update posted Nov. 7, Baxter said its North Cove facility had resumed producing some IV fluids. In an email to KFF Health News, the company wrote that customers will be able to order normal quantities of "certain IV solutions products" by the end of the year, but there is no timeline for when the North Cove facility will be back to prehurricane production levels.
Meanwhile, hospitals are facing seasonal strains on their already limited IV fluid resources, said Sam Elgawly, chief of resource stewardship at Inova, a health system in the Washington, D.C., area.
"We've been very aggressive in our conservation measures," Elgawly said, stressing that he does not believe patient care has been compromised. He told KFF Health News that across the system IV fluid usage has dropped 55% since early October. Elgawly called the shortage a crisis that he expects to have to continue managing for some time.
"We are going to operate under the assumption that this is going to be the way it is throu.
