Amid Hurricane Helene shuttering a major IV solution manufacturing plant and Hurricane Milton now barreling toward other IV manufacturing facilities in central Florida, the American Hospital Association on Monday asked the Biden administration to declare a shortage of IV solutions and invoke national emergency powers to ease the crisis.
In late September, Hurricane Helene shut down a Baxter plant in Marion, N. C., which manufactures approximately 60% of the IV solutions for the U.S. Both Baxter and “all other suppliers” of IV solutions have restricted how much their customers can order, and have stopped taking new customers, AHA president Rick Pollack wrote in the organization’s letter to Biden. As a result, hospitals have declared internal shortages and restricted IV use.
The AHA is asking the administration to direct the Food and Drug Administration to take steps including declaring a national shortage, extending expiration dates, and allowing hospitals to prepare their own sterile IV solutions.
In addition, the letter asked for the government to declare a national emergency and public health emergency so that Medicare and Medicaid rules around IV infusions can become more flexible, and to invoke the Defense Production Act to expand the production of IV solutions and bags.
The AHA also suggested the government put the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice on alert for price gouging during the shortage.
Another step the FDA could take is to allow the importation of IV bags from other countries, as it did when Hurricane Maria shut down Baxter’s Puerto Rico-based IV saline plants in 2017.
That shortage mostly affected small IV bags. According to Vizient, a health care performance improvement company, the North Carolina Baxter plant is largely a producer of large IV bags, including saline, dextrose, and Ringer’s lactate solutions.
B. Braun, another major IV supplier, has an IV solutions manufacturing plant in Daytona Beach, Fla., which is in the projected path of Category 5 Hurricane Milton.
Allison Longenhagen, a spokesperson for B. Braun, told STAT in a statement that the company is monitoring the path of Hurricane Milton.
The Daytona Beach B. Braun plant has initiated its hurricane response plan and is focused on protecting its employees and limiting the impact on the IV solutions supply, she said. B. Braun supplies about 23% of the U.S. IV market.
In a more detailed statement released Tuesday afternoon, Longenhagen said that the Daytona Beach manufacturing plant and distribution center will close on Wednesday morning in anticipation of the storm and will reopen on Friday morning.
