W.Va.'s intensive care units for infants overwhelmed WHY??

[Guest guest]

W.Va.'s intensive care units for infants overwhelmed

The Associated Press

 

Related Content

 

http://www.wvgazette.com

 

CHARLESTON, W.Va. --A rising number of infants needing intensive care has overwhelmed the state's available resources, resulting in some mothers and their children being sent to hospitals outside the state.

More than 140 newborns weren't able to be admitted to Cabell Huntington, West Virginia University and Charleston Area Medical Center Women and Children's hospitals in 2005, the most recent year for which data is available, according to a new report by the West Virginia Perinatal Partnership.

A similar number of pregnant women was also sent elsewhere by the hospitals.

"They're at 100 percent capacity," said Nancy Tolliver, a registered nurse who wrote the group's report, a project of the West Virginia Healthy Kids and Families Coalition that is funded by the Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation.

"They don't have any beds left," Tolliver said. "As soon as a baby moves out, another baby moves in. They're just overwhelmed."

Some of the infants needing intensive care are moved from one specialty hospital to another if there's room; for example, if there are no beds at Cabell Huntington Hospital, the mother and child would be transported to CAMC.

In some cases, though, pregnant mothers and their newborns were sent to hospitals in Virginia, Kentucky and Ohio.

The shortage of beds in specialty units has led some hospitals to keep mothers and newborns in need of intensive care for longer than would otherwise be the case, the report found.

"Referring hospitals have to let a number of high-risk infants be delivered at their own institution or are having to wait longer to transport the infant after birth," said Dr. Joe Werthammer, neonatal-perinatal medicine specialist at Cabell Huntington.

"Frequently, those babies will get into more difficulty than if they had been transported earlier or ideally in utero to a perinatal center to be delivered," he said.

The shortage has been brought on by a sharp increase in the number of babies needing intensive care. Between 1999 and 2005, the number of newborns needing specialized care grew from 679 to 1,805, according to the report.

The quality of care the infants get at those special units is very high: only about 3 percent of babies admitted to the state's three specialized hospitals have died in the last six years.

"As long as they get the right care, they will live and flourish," Tolliver said. "We just don't have enough beds."

 

 

 

Information from: The Charleston Gazette, http://www.wvgazette.com