When very fragile babies go home from the hospital after birth, they often require special follow-up care. But a new Stanford study has found that some high-risk infants aren't receiving referrals to the follow-up care they need.
The study, which appears in the February issue of The Journal of Pediatrics, analyzed statewide data on more than 10,000 California babies born in 2010 and 2011 who were considered high risk because they had very low birth weights. Of those who survived to hospital discharge, 20 percent did not receive referrals to the state's high-risk follow-up program.
From our press release on the research:
Babies who weigh less than 3.3 pounds at birth, nearly all of whom are born prematurely, are at risk for a variety of neurologic and developmental problems in childhood. In California, all babies with a very low birth weight who received care in a California Children's Services-approved neonatal intensive care unit qualify for a state-supported, follow-up program that provides diagnostic assessments and services until they turn 3.
"If we cannot succeed in that first step of getting these babies referred to follow-up, we're at a critical disconnect for what we can offer them as they grow and develop," said Susan Hintz, MD, professor of neonatal and developmental medicine and lead author of the study.
The study analyzed which very-low-birth-weight babies were receiving referrals. Neonatal intensive care units that treated more of these babies referred a higher proportion of such patients to follow-up care, and babies with several types of medical problems were more likely than others to receive referrals. Babies whose birth weights were on the higher end of the low-weight category were less likely to get referrals, as were those of African-American and Hispanic descent.
The good news, however, is that the data was collected just after California revamped its high-risk follow-up program. Hospitals with low referral rates are already receiving feedback to help them improve, and those with high referral rates are being studied to see how their successes can be transferred to other settings. More from our release:
"We've already made substantial improvements in site-specific online tools and resources available to hospitals for nearly real-time feedback, and referral rates now appear to be higher than they were during 2010 and 2011," Hintz said.
California is ahead of other states in having a comprehensive, statewide program to help high-risk infants, [she] added. "The expectation that all our high-risk infants will be referred is enormously innovative in this country," she said.
Previously: Preemies face increased risk of death in early adulthood, Stanford study finds, NICU trauma intervention shown to benefit mothers of preemies and How Stanford researchers are working to understand the complexities of preterm birth
Photo by Jenny
