Hospitals still have to monitor IV bags amid shortage

Hospitals will still have enough IV bags for treatments, the health minister has assured, but admits health systems are not "out of the woods" over a possible shortage.

An increase in demand and manufacturing constraints had seen a global shortage of IV bags, leading to concerns hospitals could run out.

While Health Minister Mark Butler announced in August Australia had secured 22 million extra IV bags in the next six months, 19 million of those would be the same amount the health system would normally receive in that time period, the ABC has reported.

Mr Butler said the health system had millions more IV bags than needed, but said numbers still needed to be monitored closely.

"Although the situation has very much stabilised still, (health authorities) want health systems to be using these bags judiciously and cautiously," he told ABC's Insiders program on Sunday.

"We're not out of the woods yet, but we're certainly in a much better position than we were a few months ago."

The health minister said the incident surrounding the shortage had prompted concern about how supply levels of the IV bags were monitored.

He said there was a need to treat IV fluids the same as medicine, so there would be more notifications if there were shortages in the future.

"We've always just assumed there would always be a surplus of IV fluids or saline bags, and when there was a bit of a supply interruption, it became clear that, first of all, there was no obligation to notify that shortage, which there is for medicines," Mr Butler said.

"We'll have more than we need, and also, we're looking at longer term security of supply as well."

Mr Butler said the IV bag shortage was a wake-up call for medical manufacturing in Australia.