St. Joseph’s Hospital-North will open a $2 million, 5,431-square-foot, eight-bed Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) on July 15 with an innovative feature of NICU “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.
The addition of the NICU at the Lutz hospital is part of the BayCare Kids continuum of care from babies to adolescence. BayCare delivers more babies than any other hospital system in West Central Florida and is renowned for providing the highest clinical excellence with extraordinary and compassionate 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 other NICU rooms 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 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.
