09/01/05 14:22:19
お願いします。記事の一部です。
Experts can debate the merits and morality of earlier interventions. Either way, NICUs are likely to flourish because the business proposition is so compelling.
When you add up the million-dollar imaging machines, the incubators, the expensive drugs, diagnostics, nutritional products, and physician services, neonatology is a multibillion-dollar market.
For hospitals struggling with cost overruns in other areas, NICUs can be havens of healthy revenue growth and profits. Children's National sets the goal of 4% profit margins overall, but NICU profits can be double that.
Last November the hospital unveiled a $75 million tower that features various specialty units to treat heart and brain problems of preemies.
Its expansion plans include a second NICU that will open in 2009.
It will have 54 beds, boosting Children's total preemie capacity by 25%. All of the rooms will be private and will be equipped with Internet systems that allow neurologists to monitor brain function from their homes.
New technology suffuses every corner of Children's NICU. On a sunny day in late February, the hospital is abuzz, with nurses and doctors scurrying around the floor, hovering over the various cribs and warmers that contain the preemies.
Tara Taylor, the hospital's 30-year-old nurse manager, patrols the unit and points to the latest use of ventilators that preemies with underdeveloped lungs depend on.
One preemie born at 24 weeks is hooked up to a ventilator and a computer that controls nine intravenous pumps to dole out antibiotics, sedatives, and other drugs.