Overcrowded Neonatal ICU Case Reaches $7 Mill Settlement

A $7 million settlement has been reached in a lawsuit filed against the University of Chicago Medical Center over claims of purposeful overcrowding in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. The lawsuit, filed by two former nurses, claimed that the hospital crowded babies into the ICU against state regulations, putting all the children at a high risk of infection. Part of the $7 million settlement will go to eight community hospitals and clinics that provide preventive medical care for low-income women, the Chicago Tribune reports.  Read Article: Chicago Tribune

I certainly don’t support “double bunking” pre-mature, desperately ill babies.  It would also seem that after 5300 patient days of putting 2 cribs in a space meant for one in an NICU unit would point hospital administrators to the fact that maybe an expansion of the NICU was in order.

I think that the award money’s being distributed to educate poverty stricken women on proper pre-natal care, contraception and prevention of  STD’s is a very appropriate use of the award.

It is, however, hard to ignore the hospital’s administrators’ claim that they were in a situation of not wanting to turn away these babies, many of whom had come to them from other hospitals that routinely send their sickest, poorest babies to the Comer facility.

There will likely be more coming on this situation, as the nurses who were the whistle-blowers also have a complaint against the hospital for improper infection control in the unit.  I am betting that one will be a slam dunk.

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