What are (important) things that hospitals tend to run out of quickly (that cannot be replaced very easily, such as bandages or gauze?)
I thought antibiotics, but at any given moment there probably aren’t too many patients with MRSA or sepsis. Maybe anesthetics?
Blood – and its component products, such as platelets.
Hospitals run out of stuff all the time.
For the last decade or so hospitals across the country have been experiencing nationwide shortages of supplies as basic as normal saline.Table
As Amy Middon pointed out, blood is a difficult product to plan for. It quickly expires and just a few traumas can use a massive amount.
Bandages and gauze come in many forms and don’t expire. If you run out of 4x4s there are many other dressings that can replace it.
There are currently 225 drugs listed on the hospital pharmacy shortage list. Link
What that means to you as a patient depends. Many times there is a similar drug available. But sometimes you’ll end up with the next best thing.
Not sure of the scenario, but water and electricity are more important than bandages.
Insulin is one of the main ones. It needs to be refrigerated - that’s the sort of thing that doesn’t last well.
Staff is another thing. Doesn’t matter if you have all the equipment but nobody who knows how to use it.
If it’s a looting scenario due to an apocalypse, then pain meds will go very quickly. I mean, most medications will but you could find, maybe, blood pressure medication in the debris, but the pain meds will have been used because people sometimes use them for fun.
If everything is in control outside the local zone to the hospital but it can’t get supplies easily, then it would be like what some people are fearing after Brexit. Some of it sounds esoteric (like radioactive isotopes) but it depends on the scenario you’re thinking of.
Or it might be another form of the same drug: if the 10 mg tablets are in shortage you can use two 5 mg tablets instead.
MRI machines cost a lot and hospitals are good at recovering their investment by continuously imaging patients.
As good as MRI machines are, they consume a lot of liquid helium to give them the superconductors needed for the magnetic fields.
Not the hospitals themselves but the earth itself maybe running out of helium depending on the reporting source.
Even the smallest critical access hospital could potentially have a patient with MRSA and/or sepsis.
Here are some links to the WHO’s list of essential medications. Of course, these are going to vary widely from region to region; for example, a hospital at a higher latitude will not need malaria meds, unless it’s in a city where a lot of people engage in international travel.
Interesting - what does “consume” mean - does the helium flow out somewhere after the procedure is done? It is not in an enclosed system?
One of my first jobs was working in a warehouse that supplied the two hospitals in a city of ~ 1 million. I worked overnight filling totes with orders received earlier during the day based on what they ran out of in the various wards, which was picked up and delivered at to them 6am every day.
By far the most common items on the lists were IV bag solutions (mostly basic saline) and various sizes of syringes. Also pads and other basic sanitary products. I did ship body bags, crutches, full-body burn bandages and other odd things on occasion, but mostly just the basics. We didn’t do any real medications, nor blood or that kind of product. But we probably sent them 90+% of what they went through day to day.
Yes some things hospitals use have long shelf lives, but they can’t use their building space as a warehouse. They could easily order 2 years worth of saline solution but that would take and entire room to store. So they just brought in what they needed daily from us - who did maintain an actual warehouse off-site and had the space and cheap labour to keep their shelves stocked. Why pay a hospital worker $20/hour to go to the basement and bring up 8 boxes of bulb syringes when you could pay me $6/hr to restock you entire ward for the day? This was over 20 years ago, but I don’t think it’s much different today.
Can saline be manufactured by the hospital itself if need be? Just purified and sterilized water + salt?
In theory, yes. As a matter of practicality, not really. Paying staff to somehow manually handle and fill and augment bags in a sterile environment vs a purpose built clean room assembly line cranking out hundreds if not thousands per minute. its an order of magnitude to have them made elsewhere.
Having local manufacturers might be another story, but that’s gonna be a rough business to be in.
As a once upon a time heavy inventory guy, hospital supply chains BETTER have alternative vendors if not several for mission critical supplies. In the event of a major incident, being out of IV solutions is a big deal. Bobs overpriced medical supplies that nobody buys from except in an emergency is now your best friend if he can deliver those needed supplies.
I’m gonna guess no to a hospital making it’s own saline. Part of the reason for the shortages is the difficulty manufacturing facilities have in keeping things sterile.
Yes, alternative vendors would be the ideal situation.
Instead more , shall we say creative, work arounds were used. Such as using expired normal saline. Cite
Many patients need antibiotics, not just the ones with MRSA or sepsis. For instance, pre- or post-surgery.
I know of one hospital that typically gets at least two, & sometimes as many as four tractor-trailer deliveries of lox (liquid 0[sub]2[/sub]) per day.
Note that the underlined part is true only for very extreme latitudes. Malaria used to be endemic through all swampy parts of Europe, even areas in Sweden. Areas which are not dessicated (often because of nature preservation efforts) are still considered at risk for malaria and other mosquito-borne illnesses.
Or even those needing them for the original use of antibiotics: the bacterial infections which got them hospitalized.
It’s not that they can’t, it’s that they choose not to. The hospital in my home town only occupies half its plants, but right now it’s cheaper to work “just in time” and restock daily.
I was long gone from active pharmacy practice when the big NS (normal saline - 0.9%) shortage happened a few years ago, but my colleagues told me that they were able to get sterile water and 23.4% saline and made NS out of this.
Really?? I did not even dig deep or look at much on the list…
But in the USA we can’t keep aspirin suppositories and injectable diazapam in stock. …
jeeze… Hope i don’t get a spastic butt ache .