LUTZ – St. Joseph’s Hospital-North in Lutz will open a $2 million, 5,431-square-foot, eight-bed Neonatal Intensive Care Unit on July 15 with “couplet care” rooms.
The NICU will have two private couplet care rooms, each measuring 525 square feet, where mothers and babies are cared for together. Normally, mothers and babies are separated when babies need to go to the NICU.
Clearwater’s Morton Plant Hospital recently started couplet care in its NICU.
“Morton Plant Hospital and St. Joseph’s Hospital-North are the first in the Tampa Bay area to have NICU couplet rooms, and to the best of my knowledge, the first in the state of Florida,” said Charles Ennis, a BayCare patient services director overseeing several of the health system’s NICUs.
Ennis noted staffing and physical facility logistics are reasons why NICU couplet rooms are not common.
“Speaking as both a mom and a doctor, it’s a stressful situation for your new baby to require intensive care, but even harder to deal with while you yourself are trying to recover from giving birth,” said Dr. Alisa Pierce-Kee, a BayCare Medical Group pediatrician in Lutz. “It’s emotionally challenging to have your baby out of your sight when you know they are sick. Couplet rooms are so important, to allow the parents respite, and to allow the mother to heal, while seeing with her own eyes that her newborn is getting the best care possible. I’m really proud that our hospital is such a pioneer in this kind of forward-thinking care.”
The NICU will provide specialized 24/7 care for babies born prematurely, underweight or with special health needs and requirements such as IVs, respiratory therapy or other therapies. The Level II NICU will be staffed by neonatologists, neonatal nurse practitioners and experienced neonatal nurses. The NICU will supplement St. Joseph’s Hospital-North’s existing labor and delivery and Mom & Baby maternity services. St. Joseph’s Hospital-North’s NICU location is adjacent to the hospital’s Mom & Baby unit and is converted from a space that formerly housed adult medical and surgical patient rooms.
The other NICU rooms that are not couplet care are private for one baby. The private NICU rooms, measuring 280 square feet each, include sleeping accommodations, a bathroom and shower for a parent or another loved one to stay overnight with the baby.
“We’ve seen nationally that birth rates are going down but the needs for NICU beds are increasing,” said Sara Dodds, St. Joseph’s Hospital-North president. “We know that some of that is due to women having babies later in life and women also dealing with more medical issues. We are giving local moms an option to deliver close to home with the availability of a NICU.”
St. Joseph’s Hospital-North’s Level II NICU can stabilize a baby’s condition and arrange for transport to Tampa’s St. Joseph’s Women’s Hospital Level IV NICU if a higher level of care is needed. A Level IV NICU provides the highest level of care.
St. Joseph’s Hospital-North will have BayCare’s sixth NICU. In addition to St. Joseph’s Hospital-North and previously mentioned St. Joseph’s Women’s Hospital, BayCare has NICUs at Safety Harbor’s Mease Countryside Hospital (Level III), Clearwater’s Morton Plant Hospital (Level II), Riverview’s St. Joseph’s Hospital-South (Level II) and Winter Haven Women’s Hospital (Level II). Plant City’s South Florida Baptist Hospital is also adding a Level II NICU later this year.
The addition of the NICU at St. Joseph’s Hospital-North is part of the BayCare Kids continuum of care from infancy to adolescence.