Abbott ACT cartridge shortage

Hi Kelsey. We are experiencing this as well. It is a significant shortage and we were never notified until we were at a critically low inventory and realized our cartridges had not come in. It took calling Abbott and working with our supply chain to get in touch with sales reps to get a weeks worth of cartridges shipped to us. They said that they are reserving cartridges for hospitals with ECMO patients. We are working very close with our departments that utilize ACT cartridges to ensure that we have ball park numbers to give to Abbott for them to release cartridges on a week to week basis. That has been the only way that we have been able to get them in. We were told this should be resolved by the middle of May but I know this happened a few years back as well and it took awhile for them to get caught back up. We have HMS devices onsite as well and have let our Perfusion team know that we may need their help in the meantime if we can't get enough cartridges in.

We also were not told about the shortage until we called due to not having received our shipments. We unfortunately do not have a backup method at our location but providers have decreased their cartridge usage when possible and may need to start cancelling elective surgeries. We are working very close on monitoring their usage currently. 

We are also doing the same as Ashley Albers and giving ballpark numbers to get week to week allocations. However, we were told this would not be resolved until June 11th. 

Hi Kelsey, 

We are experiencing the same thing and were not told about the allocation until we specifically asked.  We were actually notified by a rival vendor of the supply issue.  We discussed with our OR and Lab leadership and decided to try to "ride out" the shortage instead of making any changes.  We have been receiving cartridges VERY SPARINGLY.  We also use the ACT-C in our institution but the Kaolin cartridges are specifically used for our open heart cases and the OR staff would prefer to stay with that over the Celite.  Therefore, we do not intend to switch over and are waiting for a resolution which we've been ensured will be "soon".  

We have also been experiencing back orders and are currently allocated only a day’s volume approximately twice a week. We have escalated this issue to our hospital executives, as it has the potential to impact our procedure cases and patients very soon.

In response, we have notified our ACT units and cardiovascular and anesthesia service line leaders to encourage conservation when clinically feasible and to reduce waste. We maintain a running tally that is reported to executive and medical leadership each morning, detailing the previous day's tests performed, cartridges on hand, and the projected days of inventory remaining (excluding future allocations).  We have also escalated to our national corporate leaders to see if they can help communicate with Abbott at a higher level.

Additionally, we are in daily communication with our local Abbott representative to confirm shipping quantities and arrival dates. When this previously occurred in 2022, the situation lasted for several months.  Since the controls are also on allocation and we are having to QC each allotment, I am extremely concerned.

We are experincing this as well.  My rep has been good about communicating with us, but it's still a frustrating situation.

We are in the same boat with ACT supplies, we are looking into other methods as back up as we our hospital use high volume of ACT and abbott is only sending us limited reagent. We have notified units to use mindful but we however we are experiencing the haperin issue as well and so it's very frustrating situation but we have to be ready with plan B so that it does not impact patient care since our OR and cath lab depend on them.