Natividad Level III NICU Receives Accredidation from California Children's Services Care

In July, Natividad's NICU was granted provisional approval for Level III Community status by the California Children's Services program's Medical Services Branch. The NICU can attain permanent status by responding to the state's request for information within nine months.

Natividad perinatal services director Judy Rasmussen called the state approval the culmination of lots of hard work by the hospital's infant care providers.

"It's exciting news because we worked so hard for it," Rasmussen said. "I have a fabulous team and we all worked together to develop this team and this program."

Dr. Wendy Farquhar, Monterey County's state Children's Services medical director, said the community will derive plenty of benefit from having this Community NICU.

"It's definitely a resource for the community," Farquhar said.

The provisional status allows Natividad to treat a range of infants with serious health issues -- from premature newborns, who require help to breathe, to those with serious illnesses -- instead of sending them to the University of California-San Francisco's Medical Center. Rasmussen said that allows Natividad to keep parents and their children united throughout the treatment and recovery process.

"Besides the level of care, it's keeping families together, and we can work on getting the babies home as soon as possible," Rasmussen said.

Rasmussen came to Natividad from Minnesota with 26 years of perinatal experience and a plan for gaining Level III NICU status two years ago. Level III status allows hospitals to care for infants who require breathing assistance and manage their medications.

Implementation of the plan called for an extensive upgrade of the hospital's ability to treat seriously ill infants, including staff education and training, and hiring of neonatal nurse practitioners and neonatal physicians. The plan called for purchasing appropriate equipment, such as newborn ventilators and infant cardiac monitors, as well as adding properly trained pharmacists with access to fully equipped labs.

Natividad offers a neonatal transport service that has picked up sick infants from hospitals as far away as King City and Hollister and delivered them for treatment in Salinas.

Natividad has eight babies in its neonatal intensive care unit, including premature infants, newborns who survived difficult births and babies with serious infections.

The training and hard work required plenty of buy-in on the part of the 30 or so staff members who make up the neonatal intensive care unit at Natividad, said Rasmussen. Without that effort, none of this would be possible, she said.

"It's a whole team approach we have to treating sick kids," Rasmussen said. "We all committed to this and decided this was the best thing for the community."

Article By JIM JOHNSON, Herald Salinas Bureau