Hospitals forced to ration IV bags after Hurricane Helene cuts off supply

MARION, N.C. (WSPA) – For hospitals across the country, access to intravenous fluids and other supplies are harder to come by after Hurricane Helene destroyed a bridge in western North Carolina.

That bridge, on Pitts Station Road in McDowell County, connects shipping trucks to Baxter Healthcare’s North Cove facility.

“If a patient comes in having gastrointestinal bleeding from an ulcer, then those patients need to be resuscitated and often time the first time we do is hang IV fluids to help with resuscitation efforts,” said Dr. Veeral Oza, a gastroenterologist and the Medical Director for Gastroenterology with Bon Secours in Greenville.

According to the Food & Drug Administration , Baxter is a major manufacturer of those fluids.

“Baxter’s generates about 74% of the saline bags for North America for hospitals so they’re a national significance,” said Timothy Anderson, an engineer with the North Carolina Department of Transportation. “When the bridge was compromised they couldn’t get their inventory out.”

Baxter has been forced to limit how many bags of IV and peritoneal fluids (PD) fluids hospitals could order, affecting healthcare systems all across the country.

“We are trying to conserve fluids and use them more judiciously and use them more in patients that need them the most,” said Dr. Oza. “So, we are trying to triage it appropriately.”

Nancy Lindell, a spokesperson for Mission Health in Asheville said they have what they currently need.

“We’ll continue to monitor the situation, and we have contingency plans to help ensure we maintain adequate supplies,” Lindell said.

Prisma Health said they are coordinating with Baxter to access the impacts of Helene on their supply chain.

“In response, Prisma Health has implemented a conservation plan to ensure continued access to these critical resources for our patients until the supply chain is restored,” the healthcare system said in a statement. “We also are coordinating with other partners to explore all available resources.”

Bon Secours St. Francis Health System in Greenville said they are still in the process of confirming what impact they might have locally due to the supply chain issues.

The South Carolina Department of Public Health told 7NEWS while the FDA hasn’t declared a shortage they are “working with healthcare facilities, dialysis centers and EMS agencies to ensure these essential products are available to the patients who need them most.”

According to NCDOT officials, more than 2,000 crew members are working around the clock to repair more than 5,400 destroyed sites across North Carolina.

“We’re building a temporary bridge in partnership with Florida Department of Transportation,” said Nathan Moneyham, an NCDOT engineer.

Moneyham said the timeline for that temporary bridge will be roughly a month and cost about $1 million.

A new permanent bridge is planned and is expected to take at least a year to finish.

Baxter said Wednesday that they are working to ensure they are “appropriately managing inventory and minimizing disruption to patient care as we work to fully restore our North Cove manufacturing operations.”

The company said they will try to fully restore supplies to customers through a combination of importing products from other Baxter facilities and resuming operations and scaling up production at their North Cove factory.

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