Anyone having trouble getting supplies from Baxter?

[okarol]

Jenna is on PD through Fresenius, so I haven't been worried, but I guess they will be helping to supply Baxter patients.
Did anyone get this letter from Baxter?

[Tío Riñon]

Yes, I've received the letter twice this summer.  My home orders haven't been a problem yet, but there were with my travel orders.  Yellow and green solutions were sometimes backordered.  Of course, that didn't do me any good when I arrived at my destinations.  On two occasions, Baxter had to send a courier to make a last minute delivery to fulfill my orders (one of them at 2 am).

My nurse has also shared that they've experienced some of the new patient issues that were mentioned in another letter posted here too.

The most difficult part is Baxter not communicating with patients when there is going to be a delivery problem.  How can one plan if nothing is stated until the day of delivery?!!

[Tío Riñon]

Well, looks like I spoke too soon.  I was supposed to receive my monthly order last Friday.  Instead, the driver dropped off my tubing and nothing else. 

There was no phone message or written message left (I work, so deliveries are made when I'm not home), so I called Baxter to find out what happened.  They said that they didn't know, but that my solutions were re-scheduled for Monday.  However, I would only be receiving part of my order.  So, yesterday I received a fraction of my order.  Baxter promised that the remainder would be delivered by Friday.

Two points that I made with them:  1) no one ever inquired whether I had sufficient supplies to last until my re-scheduled order would arrive; 2) I was told that they might use other carriers to deliver the balance of my order.  I expressed my concern that those companies wouldn't deliver indoors and I couldn't carry a large order left on my door step.  Baxter stated that they couldn't guarantee that wouldn't happen, but said that I could call them and, if possible, they would have their warehouse come out and move the boxes if they had time a day or two later.  An interesting solution since their customer service manual states that their products shouldn't be left outside.

This sounds like a lawsuit waiting to happen...

[marlinfshr]

I'm about out of green and have only a few more yellows. Since I was in the hospital my Dr made the order for me assuming that my kidneys were never going to come back and wants me to do at least one red a day along with a mixture of the others. Of course the Baxter truck came today with 4 boxes of red only. He said the greens were back ordered and "should" be here tomorrow or Thursday. I have started peeing again, not what I was doing before going in the hospital but still getting rid of a good bit I take in so I refuse to use the red. Oh, well. 4 boxes to just take up space.

[Charlie B53]

My last three monthly orders were short and had second deliveries anywhere from two days to almost two weeks later.

I was a little over a week from delivery when I switched to using the cycler so I have almost a whole months worth of yellow and green.  Is anyone near enough to Wright City, MO to take advantage of this?  It is just taking up space, and will sit there til it expires unless someone can use it, or the power goes out here for days and I have to do manuals again.  Even then, I doubt that the power will be out for almost a month.

[jcanavera]

Baxter definitely has had supply issues.  When we went initially on PD our nurse was ordering supplies and it was difficult.  Last month was our first delivery that I ordered and it came complete.  Our next monthly delivery is tomorrow and we will see how that goes.  Its obvious that if you are placing your own orders to make sure you consider having some extra to cover any possible supply shortfalls.  So far with this first month we have plenty of supply and probably could last out another 9 days or so before we would run into problems. 

Right now we are awash in Yellow Ultra-Bag boxes.  Yellow didn't work for her and we are exclusively on green.  Since we are on the cycler these yellows will be eventually pitched out once they expire in November 2015.  I'd be happy to share if someone in the St. Louis area is running short.  I hate to throw these away.

Jack

[Darthvadar]

They had supply issues here about three years ago... We were told that it would take about a month to get back to normal... Was nearer to a year!... It was a problem with cracks in the mixing vats in the manufacturing plant in Castlebar, and it supplies the whole of Europe... It took that long to sort it out... Thankfully, it was only Extraneal that was affected, but it meant two weekly deliveries instead of four weekly... Was okay for us, but people who were out at work ran into difficulties!...

Hope they sort out the problem soon... Kidney Disease is difficult enough without these issues making life harder!...

Darth...

[jcanavera]

The scheduled yesterday delivery was short in every category except Red 2 liter bags.  We had another delivery show up early today.  So at this point our major shortage on the order is Extraneal.  Thankfully I have 15 days supply on hand so hopefully we will get some more in within 2 weeks.  The other short supplies are a small amount of Green in 6 liter and 2 liter bags.  I have decent supply so no worry there.  They are obviously moving supplies around the country to adjust for regional shortages.  You can tell based on the expiration dates.  Today's 22 6 liter green carton delivery had 3 different expiration dates. 

Jack

[Whamo]

   The problem with the UPS deliveries is that they put it on your porch.  The Baxter guys put it where I store it.  UPS means heavy lifting.

[Charlie B53]

The shortages on both of the last two months were delivered by UPS and left by the garage door.  I am continually amazed by how weak I have become in the last couple of years.  I was whipped by the time I got those boxes inside and put away, and I took a couple of breaks along the way.

Mondays delivery was short 12 boxes of yellow so I wasn't looking forward to a UPS truck.  I was pleasantly surprised when the Baxter computer called late yesterday and said I had a delivery scheduled for this morning.

I always thank these guys for being so nice and putting everything away for me.

Grrrrrrrrrr, I'll never get used to this laPTOP, ALWAYS BUMPING THE TOUCHPAD AND FINDING MY POST IS WIERDED AS THE CURSER HAS JUMPPED AND MY LAST STATEMENT IS IN THE MIDDLE OF THE PREVIOUS PARAGRAPH.  cUT AND PASTE IT WHERE IT BELONGS.  oH GREAT, now I've hit the capslock again.  Is it Monday again?

[Tío Riñon]

This is really getting out of hand with Baxter.  TWICE in the last 30 days, they have failed to get my back ordered supplies to me before I ran out of solution.  Last month it was the greens and this month the Extraneal.  It just amazes me that a major, international corporation like Baxter cannot follow up with their customers to ensure that their incomplete orders have been fulfilled.  At the ver least, call up with an update and check on whether we're OK with supplies we have!!  When I finally get them to fulfill my order, they end up paying higher costs to ship it to me express via a courier or UPS.  Hmmmm...I wonder who ends up covering the additional costs.

As Charlie B53 mentioned, these alternate delivery companies just drop off the product by the door instead of bringing it inside.  I can barely carry my boxes up for the nightly cycler run, much less an entire shipment to be stored.  Baxter's solution is for us to call them when this happens and they'll try to send a driver over in a day or two to move the product.  It will be interesting this winter to see how this will work.  I envision wasted product due to freezing.

I just received another letter from Baxter a few days ago that was composed on Oct. 3.  It explained that as of Oct. 1, they would no longer provide service to their Great Destinations program (for cruises) pending the resolution of their shortage.  They also stated that if you place a travel order for PD solutions to be delivered to your destination, you are expected to bring product yourself in case they are unable to fulfill your order.  Kind of defeats the purpose of having the solutions delivered in the first place.  If I wanted to bring it, I wouldn't ask them to arrange a delivery.

The one piece of good news is that Baxter got approval to import additional product from certain trustworthy countries to balance their production deficiencies. 

Will Baxter recover from this PR nightmare?!!