Local hospitals, medical centers conserving IV fluid during nationwide shortage

PORTLAND, Ore. (KATU) — Local hospitals and surgery centers are dealing with a nationwide IV shortage in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene.

The four major hospitals in our region – OHSU, Kaiser Permanente, Providence, and Legacy, all said they are conserving IV fluids and monitoring their inventories. OHSU has already postponed some surgeries.

“A lot of manufacturers are trying to be very judicious about where they send fluids to, making sure that everybody’s getting a little bit and not one big facility is buying up all the fluids,” said Lindsay Dye, a physician’s assistant at Evergreen Urgent Care in northwest Portland.

60 percent of the nation’s IV fluid comes from Baxter International’s North Carolina plant, which was ravaged by floodwaters during Hurricane Helene, and is closed for the foreseeable future.

“A lot of the plants are looking outside the country to try to get fluids, so it is surprising to me that we’re so reliant,” said Dye.

Dye said their main goal is to keep people out of the emergency room. There’s a simple way you can help.

“Trying to stay healthy from infectious diseases so washing hands, wearing masks when it’s appropriate,” she said.

Doctor Matthew Lewis is a plastic surgeon at the Pearl Surgicenter in northwest Portland. He said the small independent surgery center gets an allocation of 24 bags per month based on its number of surgeries.

“So all the rest of those bags have to be ordered from private vendors,” he said. “With the shortage, those costs are going up a lot.”

Although most of the surgeries Dr. Lewis does are elective, he said when hospitals cancel surgeries, it has a domino effect on smaller practices.

“More often than not we’re having to do the same thing because they are prioritized and so if they are starting to have to cancel cases because they can’t get supplies, very frequently we’re having to do the same thing.”

Lewis said if you have upcoming surgery that gets postponed, please be patient because sometimes there isn’t another solution other than waiting until supplies become available.