Low Census

Actually, there has been no change in the delivery rate (350-400 a month), but rarely do we see moms with no PNC. We are the only hospital in town. The few that transfer to our Children's hospital don't seem to be coming back, their census is down, too.

Well that's great that you're seeing increased prenatal care in your community. I would not say that we are seeing this, although in general we don't see a ton of moms with no prenatal care. I still don't buy that this is a national trend. National data is not typically evaluated in real time, and if it was, somebody would be singing a big song about such a vast improvement. Also, I'm not sure what type of unit you work in, but many/most of the admissions to our unit have actually had extensive prenatal care due to known or discovered risk factors with mom or baby.

Level III NICU, Los Angeles area...we slowed down in Nov '09 and have been getting slower since. At first, we thought it was due to changes made in contracts with our hospital. Now, we're thinking it's the economy and fewer ppl having babies/possibly fewer immigrants working here. My remedy for the lack of work in my own unit was going to be Registry work (but they are stating NICU requests are severely down/rare). It's like the bottom has dropped out in my neck of the woods! Good luck to anyone else struggling to get by in NICU :)).

We are a small 6 bed unit in WA., officially listed as a SCN. WE have been down for a long time. IN fact our unit is rarely open! We have had a busy streak 2 weeks ago and was full for 2 weeks..now just a slow "leak" of 1 baby in/out over 24 hours....we routinely get called off 2 of an 8 night stretch. We are 40 minutes from Vancouver/Portland. Don't know if moms are chosing to "go south", but even those that stay and deliver here, the babies are needing less intervention.

We are slowwwww here in D.C.! But we expect starting in June that we will have an increased census and get our 25 weekers, right about the time from the snow storm. You know...being cooped up and all that

I'm here in the Los Angeles area, but a co-worker (from Michigan) told me her big unit there was laying off NICU RNs! Couldn't believe it! Economy???

whoa! Sorta glad we have a union here so that couldn't happen here.