The Incubator

← The Incubator18 sep · 14 min

#466 - [Neo News] - 📌 Why Are 4 in 10 NICU Stays Missing From Birth Records?

#466 - [Neo News] - 📌 Why Are 4 in 10 NICU Stays Missing From Birth Records?18 sep14 min

Send us Fan Mail Ben and Eli dig into a Journal of Perinatology study that asks a deceptively simple question: can we trust birth certificate data to tell us how many babies actually need NICU care? The answer, it turns out, is no. Nearly 40% of NICU admissions are missing from birth certificates, with the biggest gaps among full-term and late-preterm infants, and troubling racial disparities in which admissions get missed. Ben and Eli unpack what this means for how states and hospitals alloc...