The Smallest Patients: The 1981 NICU and Couplet Care, at the Serving Hospital

Item 5 · Boundary (Memorial Hospital of South Bend / Beacon Children's Hospital)

Lead: New Carlisle babies who need intensive care go to South Bend, and the unit there carries a dated founding and a care-model first, both from the hospital system's own record. Beacon Health System states: “Since its inception in 1981, the NICU has consistently met similar Level III requirements established by the American Academy of Pediatrics. The unit was the first in the country to offer couplet care, which enables families to stay with their babies in private patient rooms for the duration of their stay.” The two records of when couplet care took built form are kept separate here, unmerged. Beacon's 2019 statement attaches the first to the unit's history as a whole. Notre Dame's own storytelling of the same unit dates the purpose-built rooms: before couplet care rooms were introduced in 2017 the unit looked otherwise, and “in 2017, Beacon became the first US hospital to install those rooms” — rooms in the new Beacon Children's Hospital, opened in May 2017, in which a mother still a patient receives her postpartum care in the same room as her NICU baby. The neonatologist the Notre Dame account names as hired to create the NICU is Dr. Bob White. The verified standing that closes the item is dated: on 2 December 2019 the Indiana State Department of Health certified Beacon Children's neonatal intensive care and Memorial's obstetrics at Level of Care III. The first belongs to South Bend; it is printed here because it is the unit that serves this town's smallest patients.

Sources:

1. Beacon Health System news, 2 Dec. 2019, “Beacon recognized by state as leader in mother-baby care”: NICU inception 1981; Level III consistency; “first in the country to offer couplet care”; Indiana Level of Care III certification for neonatal intensive care and obstetrics.
2. Notre Dame Stories, “Fighting for NICU babies and their families”: Dr. Bob White hired to create the NICU; couplet care rooms introduced 2017; “in 2017, Beacon became the first US hospital to install those rooms.”
3. Tradeline, Oct. 2018, “Reimagining the NICU to Support Couplet and Family Care at Beacon Children's Hospital”: 39-bed NICU, single-family and couplet care room designs, modelled in part on Karolinska; length of stay down 1.7 days since couplet care introduced.