Electrolytes are administered to a critically ill patient for nutritional support intravenously. They are given to patients who cannot get their nutrition any other way.
O’Neal said he’s concerned that as supplies shrink, measures will have to be taken.
“We are dangerously close, we believe, when we will have to ration care to the critically ill. I would say within days or weeks,” said O’Neal.
[…]
There are so few makers of electrolytes that when one drug company, American Regent, stopped production because of quality issues, it sent supplies in a tail spin nationwide.
More – “Used to be I’d spend a lot of money buying drugs,” he said. “Now, I’m spending more money on the staffing to track down drugs.”
Wait until Obamacare kicks in . . . this is just the warmup act.
The FDA, in it’s infinite wisdom, has discontinued the production of all drugs that haven’t gone through the current regime of testing. Therefore, some drugs that have been safely in use for decades and sold cheaply as generics are now banned. Some have no effective replacement, and the currently prescribed medications are prohibitivly expensive and come with potentially leathal side effects not present in the discontinued drugs.
Actions like this only exaserbate existing shortages and cause additional doctor visits as alternatives to discontinued meds are explored. Over regulation is an avoidable problem.
first time I heard about electrolytes in nutrition was a scene in ‘Space Odyssey 2010’. John Lithgow had just come out of typical hollywood space travel ‘hibernation’.
He was also one of the numerous narrators of the Ken Burns production ‘The West’.
They ALREADY ration care to critically ill patients in Canada. What do people think a waiting list is?
There’s always medical tourism. It may be inconvenient, but you can get the medical attention you need from hospitals that are far cleaner than ours and from MD.s who are often trained in the same places as ours are.
This is what you get with rampant outsourcing long term – there are no more customers who can pay for your goods, as they are not getting paid anywhere near inflation rate or lost their jobs altogether.
Gee, you sue people who produce drugs long enough and there’s a shortage? Never saw that coming.
In other news, Drudge reports Florida OB/GYNs are refusing to take on obese patients.
http://www.dietsinreview.com/diet_column/05/doctors-turning-away-obese-pregnant-women/
Contrary to the spin of MSM weenies desperately trying to make this about fat-o-phobia or some kind of racism, its really just about lawsuits.
Risk of complications in pregnancy -steeply- increases with obesity, and Florida doctors can no longer afford the -insurance- to cover the -lawsuits-. The insurance “tail” on a baby delivery is 18 years long. If anything bigger than a hangnail happens to the kid before they are 18 the OB can be successfully sued for it.
Any complication can be the reason for a lawsuit, so the more potential for problems the more load there is going to be on that doctor’s “tail”. So 15 out of 105 OBs polled in Florida have stopped taking fat women.
This does not address the number of OBs who have simply LEFT Florida over the last few years. In some states it is virtually impossible to even get an OB due to the extreme cost of malpractice insurance. Women commonly travel out of state for delivery if they don’t have gold plated medical insurance.
If you sue them, they will leave.
Time to start referring the elderly sick folks to the in-site needle joints. They seem to be fully stocked and have nurses there to boot.
Thee is an oppurtunity for an enterprising person to start a company in Canada.
By the time the Obama FDA makes America a poisened shower Nation. Best to have our own enterprises with no Government interference except quality control.
JMO
It is not as though these “electrolytes” are space-age chemicals. We are talking about sodium, potassium, calcium, chloride, a few things like that.
The simplest chemicals, but essential for life. With reagent grade supplies, such as are available from several chemical suppliers (Aldrich or Merck for instance) and some distilled water, any competent chemist – Hell, any competent third-year chemistry student – could mix up the necessary solutions.
In fact in the treatment of cholera in poor parts of the world a certain mixture of electrolyte solids, with some nutrient materials,
is available and is field-prepared and administered.
What is about to happen, when the available electrolyte solutions run out, is plain murder; murder by the US Government and by American lawyers.
“There’s always medical tourism”.
Yes there is. I flew to Pakistan and got a major operation in a hospital that had no windows and feral cats running about. Nurses slept underneath a concrete staircase on the floor in sleeping bags. Cost me $40,000, mainly because I took a Canadian nurse with me to ensure cleanliness. Got an infection of course and spent 5 days in the Bangkok international. Without a doubt the best hospital I’ve ever been in. I’ve been in a few with this 30 year illness.
A Doctor with 3 american degrees at my bedside 5 times a day, nurses in starched whites in the room at all times. It was a $3,000 a night suite, two rooms, big screen tv’s, couches, most sophisticated electronic bed you could imagine. It was simply amazing for $1000 a day.
My alternative was waiting 8 years in Canada.
The costs of producing a drug I can only imagine. When I did lab work there was an explosion of regulations and paperwork to make regulators happy. Our staff increased and our productivity fell. If you are not making a decent profit it just isn’t worth it and you stop production. Making drugs isn’t a chairatable enterprise.
There are the usual problems like supply, purity and price but the choices are fewer for those too.
I agree with John Lewis – these are not space age drugs. If you look at the labels in the video, you see one is labelled “potassium chloride” – well, that’s basically a salt dissolved in distilled water. Probably the most important of the electrolytes is sodium, which is salt. If you’ve ever had an IV, it’s almost always saline solution with whatever else you need pumped into it.
It’s inconceivable to me that something as simple as salt dissolved in water can’t be simply and readily available. If some bureaucrats are responsible for the shortages, again, I agree with John L.: it’s simply murder.
Brawndo’s got what vegetables crave. It’s got electrolytes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1fKzw05Q5A
Canadian doctors say, prescription drugs in Canada are an outrageous cost. I believe they said, Canada can only purchase drugs, from Canada. We pay the highest drug costs in the world.
Scandinavian country’s, England, France and a few other country’s, have excellent health care plans that work well. You would think they would do a study, to see why theirs work and ours doesn’t. There seems to be no effort, to reconstruct a health care plan, that just doesn’t work. If I had to pay $40,000 for a surgery, just write me off. There is no way, millions of Canadians could ever pay that amount of money.
I am always so shocked to hear, American people selling their homes to pay medical bills. It just doesn’t seem fair.
Guess they haven’t heard of Gatoraid down there…LOL
I must emphasise that the article is talking aboutsimple chemicals. To be sure, if you obtain a catalogue of organic compounds
you will find some that cost thousands of dollars a gram; this because they are so difficult to make. But we
are talking about sodium chloride (common salt), calcium chloride, potassium chloride, and a few other things of that sort,
which industrially can be purchased for dollars a ton, even in high purity.
What we are about to see is murder by US Governmental regulatory bureaucrats.
Well, John Lewis, we are talking about very specific standards for IV use. Sterile, etc. Didn’t we have a manufacturer in SK that closed a few years ago (west of Regina?)? Leaving a single manufacturer?
YEs, they are simple chemicals, easily made into solution BUT these are IV drugs, which need to be sterile, batched, tested for purity, standardized for dose, labelled to meet Health Canada Standards, expiry dates, and meet the requirements for Good Manufacturing. As a previous intensive care pharmacist for 15 years, some hospitals can make them pretty well for their own use BUT they would not be legal as they would not meet Good Manufacturing Practices (due to a variety of factors).
You need a manufacturing plant and people who can manage production, marketing, supply chain etc. Hmmmmm…..where have all the the drug company physical plants gone?
Kate highlights another point worthy of some commentary.
Drugs are a huge cost in hospitals and I spent a lot of time trying to manage waste, improve efficiency, avoid drug reactions, ensure the appropriate drug and dose was prescribed (defacto prescribing many drugs)and lots of education to physicians and nurses….now pharmacy managers have to spend money on staff to source drugs instead?????? Yikes.
So no critical drugs and fewer pharmacists at the bedside ensuring that critical drugs are appropriately prescribed. Double whammy.
G.J.W. said: “If I had to pay $40,000 for a surgery, just write me off.”
Dude, how much did your car cost?
“I am always so shocked to hear, American people selling their homes to pay medical bills. It just doesn’t seem fair.”
What’s more important, a house or your LIFE? How are you going to live in it if you’re dead? Prioritize much?
If you lose everything you have worked for in your life to pay medical bills, then life as you have known it is over anyway. Canada may not have the best system in the world, but I sure as hell would’nt trade it with any other.
My wife pointed out that Gatorade is an electrolyte
solution, plus sugars (glucose, fructose, and sucrose) and flavours and preservatives.
“Well, John Lewis, we are talking about very specific standards for IV use. Sterile, etc. Didn’t we have a manufacturer in SK that closed a few years ago (west of Regina?)? Leaving a single manufacturer? ” Precisely. Any competent third year chemistry student could meet these standards. Have you the faintest idea about the purity requirements necessary in much chemical work? Syntheses etc? Do you have the faintest idea of what is required for conductivity grade water?
If my choice is death or taking a chance on the purity of regular old distilled water and commonly available chemicals, I’m going the DIY route. Heck, I’ll have a Gatorade IV – does it come in Cherry to match my blood? Green is a bit much.
I feel like I’m reading comments on an “Onion” video. Is this a serious story? Electrolytes are everywhere. Tap water is bulging with electrolytes. They’re in every food and beverage. It isn’t like you get more healthy by taking in more and more, you only need so many, and that’s it. The only way to get low on them is by getting dehydrated from exercise or hot temperatures. Once you dring some water, or a sports drink, you’re cured.