Neonatal care service

Neonatal care service

Neonatal Care Services

Neonatal care is delivered by three levels of unit which in the United Kingdom are described as the following: Neonatal Intensive Care Units (NICU) provide care for the whole range of neonatal care. They are staffed to care for the sickest and most immature babies and staff work closely with their local maternity teams and fetal medicine services. The NHS England Neonatal Critical Care service specification [E08/S/a] indicates that all women and their babies who are born <27 weeks of gestation or birthweight <800g, and multiple pregnancies <28 weeks of gestation, should receive perinatal and early neonatal care in a maternity service with a NICU facility. Local Neonatal Units (LNU) provide care for all babies born at their hospital at 27 weeks of gestation or more, >800g birthweight or multiple pregnancies >28 weeks (which includes short-term intensive care where necessary) and they may receive babies 27-31 weeks who require high dependency care. Special Care Units (SCU) provide local care for babies born at 32 weeks or more and >1000g birthweight who require only special care or short-term high dependency care. All pregnant women who fall outside these categories or babies who unexpectedly need intensive care are transferred to an appropriate unit in the local care pathway. Care Pathways: Each neonatal network should comprise a number of maternity and neonatal services with one or two NICUs and a small number of LNUs/SCUs depending on local population need. All these units working together should support the delivery of a “local care pathway” which should have the capacity and resources to care for women who live within the network area and their babies for all conditions, except neonatal surgical or cardiac services and extremely rare conditions that are provided on a regional or supra-regional service. Source: NHS England and NHS Improvement, Dec 2019, Implementing the recommendations of the Neonatal Critical Care Transformation Review. Other countries may have similar definitions.

• Governance and staffing
• Personalised care
• Clinical risk management
• Care management
• Environment and facilities
• Quality improvement

The CHKS Standards criteria address these elements through succinct criteria statements that are supported by guidance which helps the organisation understand the intent of the criteria, so that it can be applied in the local context. Additionally, references are provided to direct further reading on the relevant topic.

Throughout the standards the criteria are linked to key assessment frameworks including ISO 9001, the Care Quality Commission, Quality Statements and the Health Information and Quality Authority, (Ireland) National Standards.