Baxter repaired its factory. Customers' conservation practices still weighed on demand.

Baxter's 2025 annual report says North Cove was fully operational by the end of the first quarter of 2025, yet customer conservation practices continued to reduce IV-solution demand. Duke's October 2024 operational notice records an actual response to the disruption: central inventory management and additional approval requirements. The connection is between physical recovery and changed customer procedures. Restoring manufacturing capacity need not restore prior demand if customers have changed how they use a product. Duke's notice does not establish that those particular procedures persisted there or caused Baxter's later demand trend. Counterevidence narrows the interpretation. A four-site paediatric intensive-care study's abstract reports no significant reduction in IV-fluid use after conservation recommendations. Its result cautions against assuming all hospitals or patient populations respond alike. Only the institutional abstract, not the full paper, was reviewed for this draft.