Hospitals have been compelled to innovate with new methods of hydrating sufferers and giving them drugs, after a key manufacturing unit that produces IV fluid baggage flooded throughout Hurricane Helene. (This story first aired on Morning Version on Nov. 7, 2024.)
AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
When Hurricane Helene made its method to western North Carolina, it flooded a North Carolina plant that makes greater than 60% of the nation’s IV fluid baggage. Hospitals are nonetheless months of IV fluid shortages, and it isn’t clear when the plant will return to full manufacturing. So, as Jackie Fortier reviews, some hospitals are discovering new methods to get by.
JACKIE FORTIER, BYLINE: In late September, Hurricane Helene tore via the South, shocking residents like emergency room nurse Ashley Bunting.
ASHLEY BUNTING: I am from Florida initially, and I moved as much as the mountains pondering, oh, I am by no means going to be impacted by a hurricane right here.
FORTIER: Bunting cares for sufferers at Mission Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina. It has been greater than a month, and the water popping out of the hospital faucets nonetheless is not secure to drink.
BUNTING: We’re type of restricted to water bottles. We won’t give our sufferers ice chips, like lots of them request.
FORTIER: And the IV fluids Bunting might use as a substitute are nonetheless in brief provide. Earlier than Hurricane Helene, one firm, Baxter, produced 1.5 million IV baggage at its North Carolina facility, greater than half of what U.S. hospitals use. However when the manufacturing unit flooded, manufacturing floor to a cease.
BUNTING: Perhaps getting 60% of our IV fluids from one single supply is not the neatest long-term plan.
FORTIER: The manufacturing unit has re-opened and is producing some IV baggage, however the earliest they’re going to begin to ship is late November. Greater than 1,000 miles north, in Presque Isle, Maine, Nurse Nicole Bridges can be dealing with the scarcity at AR Gould Hospital. She says they’re transitioning sufferers from IV antibiotics to oral antibiotic capsules before they used to.
NICOLE BRIDGES: I feel the workaround proper now’s working rather well. I do not know what it may appear like subsequent week or subsequent month.
FORTIER: Probably the most fragile sufferers at most hospitals are nonetheless getting drugs through IV, however some hospital directors see a possibility within the scarcity. Dr. Sam Elgawly is with Inova Well being within the Washington D.C. space.
SAM ELGAWLY: How typically are we truly giving it greater than we have to? The place we simply – you recognize, simply hold it going as a result of a affected person’s within the hospital?
FORTIER: Of their 5 hospitals, they’ve slashed IV fluids by about 55%. However surgical demand will quickly go up. Sometimes, sufferers attempt to cram procedures in earlier than the insurance coverage cycle ends in December and deductibles reset. A technique Inova is conserving IV baggage is by skipping further fluids with some drugs.
ELGAWLY: You’ll do what’s referred to as push a drugs. You do not even want a bag in any respect. You simply give the treatment with out the bag. There was rising literature during the last 10 to twenty years that signifies perhaps you needn’t use as a lot, and this accelerated our innovation and testing of that concept.
FORTIER: However some nurses say doing that may be extra labor intensive. Dr. Vince Inexperienced is with Pipeline Well being, a small hospital system within the Los Angeles space. They’re solely getting half the IV baggage they’d usually obtain.
VINCE GREEN: Each IV fluid bag that we are able to get, we’re buying and we’re maintaining. We’re making an attempt to get our arms on all the pieces we are able to.
FORTIER: Inexperienced says medical workers are encouraging sufferers to drink Gatorade or water, as a substitute of defaulting to IVs for hydration. And so they be sure that to make use of up all the bag earlier than beginning one other.
GREEN: If they arrive in with IV fluids that the paramedics have began, let’s proceed it. If it saves half a bag of fluids, so be it, but it surely provides up over time.
FORTIER: A few of these conservation measures might develop into everlasting. First, Dr. Inexperienced wish to see information exhibiting that affected person outcomes aren’t affected. For now, among the new methods simply make sense to him.
GREEN: We needn’t have this a lot waste and refill our landfills with stuff that, if we might scale back stuff, I feel it might be sensible.
FORTIER: Inexperienced continues to be nervous for the close to future. They’re all the way down to a two-week provide, and respiratory virus season is simply across the nook.
RASCOE: That is reporter Jackie Fortier with our associate KFF Well being Information.
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