NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — The nationwide shortage of IV fluids has had a minimal impact thus far on operations at Hutchinson Regional Medical Center.
"There's basically three main manufacturers of IV fluids," said Nicole Brand, director of pharmacy at Hutchinson Regional. "One of them is Baxter, and Baxter's plant that produced like 60% of the nation's IV fluids was hit by the hurricane in North Carolina."
Hutch Regional uses a different supplier as its main supplier for IV fluids.
"We had allocation with ICU medical, and so far we're able to maintain that allocation," Brand said. "It technically hasn't affected us at all yet."
The system is looking ahead, though, if the shortage continues for a lengthy period.
"We have implemented some mitigation strategies on our end to just reduce the usage of IV fluids to kind of help prolong our inventory just in case it does go longer than the end of the year," Brand said. "We are still doing some things internally that will just kind of help us reserve our IV fluids just in case."
Some medicines have IV as an option, but not the only option.
"People who are able to tolerate oral products, we'll have them take more fluids instead of infusing IV fluids. There are also, the main thing that we can impact is antibiotics. There's a lot of IV antibiotics that are available and equivalent in the oral form. So if the patient is able to take and tolerate oral, then we would give them oral instead of IV."
Baxter is telling pharmacists the plan is to be back at capacity by the end of the year.