title: Hospital cuts length of stay for babies in the NICU by four days.
abstract: An initiative in which the entire treatment team focuses on moving premature babies through the continuum has resulted in a drop of foul days in the average length of stay at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center's Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. The treatment team has daily rounds on every patient and a multidisciplinary early discharge team assesses every patientat the bedside to determine who is ready to go home and what is holding up the discharge, and to take action to move things along. The bedside nurses assess the babies several times a day for feeding readiness and to determine if they are ready to move along in the clinical protocol. The team gets parents involved in daily care and gives them hands-on experience so they won't be nervous about caring for the child at home.
mesh_terms: D002140:California; D017598:Efficiency, Organizational; D006801:Humans; D007231:Infant, Newborn; D007363:Intensive Care Units, Neonatal / Q000458:organization & administration*; D007902:Length of Stay; D019982:Organizational Case Studies; D011787:Quality of Health Care