At MedStar Washington Hospital Center, doctors and nurses are moving as many patients as they can from intravenous medications to the same drugs in pill form.

If the patients are getting common antibiotics like ampicillin, and they can swallow, they’re likely to be switched to pills, says Bonnie Levin, assistant vice president of pharmacy services for MedStar Health, which includes 10 hospitals in the Washington, D.C., area.

That’s because MedStar, like many hospitals across the U.S., is running low on IV bags, especially the minibags that are used to deliver certain types of medicine. Some of these bags contain saline solution when shipped, and a nurse or hospital pharmacist adds the drug when it’s ready to be used. Other bags come premixed with commonly used medicines. Continue reading>>