Monday, April 14, 2014

IV Saline Shortage Affects EMMC

Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor is feeling the pinch of a nationwide shortage of IV saline.
The solution is vital in keeping patients hydrated, especially in emergency situations.
Hospital officials say they do have a process in place for shortages like this, and through conservation, they’ve been able to avoid any impact to patients.
“When this shortage came up, we kind of got ahead of it. There was never an issue that patients did not get what they needed. Some of the things we did is we conserved some of the supply that we had and maybe switched some of our medications to other solutions that they were compatible with so we didn’t have any gaps in being able to provide normal saline to the patients that needed it,” said Jamie Cronin, Clinical Manager at the EMMC Pharmacy Department.
EMMC officials say in the case of a more dire situation, they can actually produce saline solution in-house on a per-patient basis.
We’re told the shortage was caused by a spike in demand.

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