UR Medicine hospitals will pause some elective and semi-elective surgical procedures requiring intravenous sterile fluids to conserve resources in a nationwide shortage. The pause goes into effect Oct. 16.
Shipments of IV sterile fluids dropped drastically after Hurricane Helene disrupted supply at a Baxter facility in Marion, N.C. The site provided a significant portion of IV solutions, irrigation fluids, and peritoneal solutions to the U.S. medical system, according to an Oct. 9 letter from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to health care providers.
While UR Medicine has found ways, like alternative rehydration strategies or directly injecting antibiotics, to use fluids more efficiently, the supply doesn’t match the demand, officials say. Hospitals have been allotted IV fluids, but UR Medicine has received less than its allotment because of limited supply, says Michael Apostolakos M.D., chief medical officer.
“The U.S. government has approved use of fluids from international suppliers, and we are working to increase supplies from multiple vendors,” he says. “While these efforts are underway, we have not reached a point where incoming supply of IV fluids matches the rate at which we are using them, and we continue to receive inconsistent quantities of supply from our vendor.”
The pause on some elective and semi-elective surgeries will allow UR Medicine to extend its reserves across its locations to ensure urgent and emergent cases are prioritized. Cases will be reviewed daily to determine urgency. The decision affects roughly half of the patients that are scheduled to undergo surgery over the next three days, starting tomorrow.
“We have to be more conservative so that we can safeguard inventory for all levels of care,” Apostolakos says. “With this pause, we aim to extend our systemwide reserves of IV fluids by at least 30 percent which, combined with conservation efforts are already underway, should preserve our supply for priority, urgent and emergent cases.”
The surgeries that are impacted include those that don’t require urgent intervention. For instance, certain orthopedic and plastic surgeries. Apostolakos expressed his understanding over the inconvenience these delays might cause patients.
“Our heart goes out to them, and we’d like to perform it for them as soon as possible, but we have to gauge surgeries on how urgent they are for life and limb and that’s why we have a perioperative group that looks at every patient’s schedule for surgery, look at the urgency and make a determination about whether that’s a surgery that we should proceed with today or delay into the future,” he says.
The perioperative group, which includes surgeons, anesthesiologists and other health care providers, consider various factors in making such decisions. Though the team is looking at cases that could wait for three months, Apostolakos doesn’t expect patients to have to wait that long.
“It’s just a line in the sand that we’re using to make sure that we’re not avoiding surgeries and people who really need it in the next few days to few weeks,” he says. “So, we’re using that as the guidepost as to which patients may need to wait and then we will reschedule them as soon as we can.”
Additionally, UR Medicine is considering opportunities to expand hours in the future and make other operating rooms available so that surgeries can get back on track as soon as resources become available.
Rochester Regional Health, the area’s second-largest medical system, has rescheduled a small number of elective procedures requiring a high volume of IV fluids, according to an online statement.
Smriti Jacob is Rochester Beacon managing editor. The Beacon welcomes comments and letters from readers who adhere to our comment policy including use of their full, real name. Submissions to the Letters page should be sent to [email protected].
It is absolutely eye opening. Our economy, our way of life is so incredibly fragile. This was a 6 hour storm folks. It was not an invasion in the military sense. Can you imagine if we were invaded militarily? This country would implode in hours. We had better get our fragile house in order. Semper Fi.
Please elaborate. How does one get their “fragile house in order” to lessen the impact of hurriucanes, tornadoes, floods, earthquakes and the like? And by all means enlighten us as to what else the United States, which spends as much on its military and on defense as the next 10 biggest spending countries COMBINED, can do.
Ok, here we go. We just went through two major storms. Helena went through my neighborhood. That means that I experienced it first hand. I’m not sure if you heard but mr. “M” made the announcement that FEMA was running out of funds. They were actually used somewhere else for other purposes. I will say that the governor of Florida had prepared very well for that storm. They were actually prepared well before the storm to unleash a team to attend to the repair and cleanup. Regarding the military. Spending in the military does not equate to military might. Let me ask a couple of questions. Regarding recruitment, how many are we short of the need? About 40,000. Few are qualified because we are fat. How are we addressing that need? By lowering the standards. How many ships were decommissioned? About 48. What is the number one issue with building additional Navy vessels? Trained workers. And that Len Sheldon leads me to the RCSD. What is our graduation rate? Yup, pretty pathetic. The worst school district in NYS and ranks pretty low nationally as well. The military is not allowed to enter the schools as I remember. Decades of educational failure. I can point you to exactly why because I have been advocating for education for some 17 years. We have a feckless board of education. We have a teachers union president who thinks he is doing just fine. And, I may add he is, personally doing just fine. But the mission of educating escapes him. We destroyed the Edison Technical and Industrial High School of old. Graduates from such a school are exactly what the ship building industry is looking for. But no, not in Rochester. Edison was the CROWN JEWEL of education at one time. I could go on and on with the crime, drugs, child poverty, generational poverty etc. But I think you get the point here. We are not doing well nationally nor locally. I don’t know if I can enlighten you and that would be because you have a mindset that won’t allow it. The problems are obvious and there are solutions. That’s the good news. SEMPER FI.
In a country like ours, shouldn’t we have multiple sites in more mild weather areas to manufacture medical supplies like IVs and medications like antibiotics? Then again we are not the same country anymore are we?