Ninety percent of patients in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) at Children’s of Alabama will undergo a surgical procedure during their admission, putting them at risk of infections and other complications. Thus, the NICU team has been implementing performance improvement initiatives to improve outcomes, including focusing on pain control and standardizing handoffs before and after surgery. 

The most recent initiative targets perioperative antibiotic use. “The vast majority of surgical patients will require some type of antibiotic during the perioperative period,” said neonatologist Allison Black, M.D., “and we noticed there wasn’t any standard as to the dose or type of antibiotics used for each procedure.” 

That’s a problem, she said, because prolonged use of broad-spectrum antibiotics may be harmful. “It changes the infant’s gut flora, increases the risk for antibiotic-resistant infections, and may have toxicities,” she said. 

Thus, the NICU team, including physicians, nurse practitioners, and pharmacists, collaborated with the general surgeons and each surgical subspecialty to devise a solution. The surgeons collected evidence and then recommended an antibiotic as well as its dose and duration based on the specific procedure. The team used these recommendations and the evidence supporting them to create the NICU Perioperative Antibiotic Prophylaxis guidelines. 

“Now, unless there is a specific reason, all perioperative antibiotics are ordered based on these guidelines, and surgeons follow the protocol,” Dr. Black said. “It’s like clockwork.” The result is less use of prolonged empiric antibiotics and less confusion over which to use. Another advantage is less exposure to nephrotoxic drugs that can lead to acute kidney injury, she said. 

The unit’s two pharmacists ensure the protocol is followed. “Initially, it was difficult to break our decades-long habit of asking the surgeons which antibiotic they preferred and for how long after each surgical case,” said clinical pharmacist Sadie Stone, PharmD. “With the perioperative guidelines in place, we can initiate an evidence-based regimen quickly for our most common surgical procedures.”  

Since instituting the guidelines, the pharmacists have been collecting data and tracking guideline compliance. “We discuss each surgical plan with the nurse practitioner based on the guidelines when the patient returns from surgery,” said clinical pharmacist Emily Evans, PharmD. Each case is then retrospectively reviewed to determine if the procedure has an antimicrobial course included in the guidelines. If so, the actual antimicrobial course is screened against the guidelines for adherence. “These guidelines have expanded our antimicrobial stewardship role in the NICU,” she said. 

“The hope is that reduction in the use of antibiotics will decrease the need for central lines, which, in turn, also reduces the risk of infections and associated complications,” said Dr. Black. The team also tracks post-operative infection rates to ensure there is no increase. 

“This initiative again shows the improvement possible with multidisciplinary collaboration,” she said. 

Children’s of Alabama neonatologist Samuel Gentle, M.D.

Children’s of Alabama neonatologist Samuel Gentle, M.D., is passionate about the tiny babies he treats—and passionate in his belief that healthcare professionals like him can always do better. That’s why he helped start the Alabama Perinatal Quality Collaborative (ALPQC), a statewide initiative devoted to improving the quality of care for women and children. “Quality improvement is something I’ve been intrinsically drawn to,” he said. “I love the application of data science to a healthcare setting, allowing a confluence of providers to demonstrably show their efforts have impacted a patient population.”  

The collaborative’s first project in 2018 was improving birth certificate accuracy. This might sound small, but accurate vital statistics and birth data are critical ingredients to monitor population health—particularly that of women and children—solve public health problems at the local, state and federal levels; and make wise decisions about where to spend limited dollars.  

When the initiative started, just 70 percent of the 25 participating hospitals were submitting accurate birth certificates based on 11 key variables, with low reporting accuracy for individual variables such as antenatal corticosteroids, birth weight and maternal hypertension. After this quality improvement initiative, 95 percent of enrolled hospitals were submitting accurate birth certificates.  

The pandemic hit before the collaborative could launch its next project. Instead of shutting down, however, “we pivoted,” Dr. Gentle said, hosting webinars about COVID-19 and maternal and child health to share best practices from other hospitals and to “continue to evolve and learn from each other.” 

Finally, with the country returning to some version of normal, the ALPQC was ready to move on to one of its next projects: neonatal opioid withdrawal syndrome (NOWS).  “Alabama saw a 20 percent increase in overdose deaths in 2020 compared to 2019,” Dr. Gentle said. “This is a critical time to address many of the aims set forth by this initiative.” In 2016, NOWS affected 6.7 per 1,000 in-hospital births with overall hospitalization costs of $572.7 million.¹ In Alabama that year, nearly 600 infants covered by Medicaid were diagnosed with NOWS, an increase of nearly 100 percent from 2010. 

Using the Institute of Health Improvement’s model for improving quality, the initiative focuses on developing and instituting standardized practices around NOWS, including reducing stigma, increasing the use of non-pharmacologic care, and providing structural support for mothers, including addiction services and medication for opioid use disorder.   

“The global aim is to optimize care for mothers and their newborns with NOWS,” Dr. Gentle said. More specifically, the ALPQC hopes to reduce length of stay and exposure to pharmacologic treatments by 20 percent; and ensure that 95 percent of families are discharged with a collaborative plan linking them to community services. The project will run in conjunction with a third ALPQC initiative to decrease rates of severe maternal morbidity associated with hypertensive disorders of pregnancy. The collaborative hopes to have results by the end of the year. 

Although the ALPQC is still gathering data, at least one hospital cut the length of stay in half for infants with NOWS, Dr. Gentle said. 

The success of such statewide improvement requires a broad group of stakeholders, he said. “This work would not be possible without our partnerships,” he added, which include the Alabama Hospital Association, the Alabama Department of Public Health and payers. He also highlighted ALPQC Program Director Evelyn Coronado-Guillaumet’s leadership, as well as the consortium of hospitals’ continued engagement. “The hospitals’ shared experience certainly accelerates the work,” he said.  

Asked what’s next on the agenda, Dr. Gentle said telecommunication-based training for neonatal resuscitation. 

¹ Strahan AE, Guy GP, Bohm M, Frey M, Ko JY. Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome Incidence and Health Care Costs in the United States, 2016. JAMA Pediatr. 2020;174(2):200–202.

Infants in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) are at huge risk of problems with oral feeding, potentially requiring surgical intervention if they can’t take in the nutrition required for growth and healing.  

Historically, specialized occupational therapists evaluated and treated babies who had feeding issues at Children’s of Alabama. But today, they are joined by specialized speech therapists. 

“The addition of speech therapists with special interest in NICU patients gave us an additional caretaker with a different background and skill set,” said neonatologist Allison Black, M.D. “We took advantage of both disciplines and their specialized, yet different, training and teamed them to create the infant feeding team.” 

“The teamwork begins during the evaluation process, even performing some of the tests such as swallowing studies and fiberoptic endoscopic evaluations of swallowing together,” Dr. Black said. Having two therapists work together for these studies is a bonus, said Christy Moran, an occupational therapist who works on the feeding team.  

For instance, she said, it is quite challenging to perform a modified barium swallow on an infant. With two therapists, however, one positions the infant and serves as feeder, incorporating the techniques used to support oral feeding. The other therapist prepares the barium and watches the screen. “It is a much better study with two therapists working together, so each can focus completely on their part instead of splitting their attention between one or the other,” Moran said.  

The therapists then collaborate to form a feeding and therapy plan, which they share with the rest of the NICU team. The approach continues until the patient is discharged home. 

“The patient benefits because they get evaluated by different people at different times, both of whom are experts at feeding infants,” Dr. Black said. “This helps us get a clearer overall picture of what the infant is truly capable of since a baby’s interest in feeding can depend on the time of day and multiple other factors, all of which are constantly changing in the NICU.”  

Working as a team also enables greater support for families and caretakers, said speech-language pathologist Allie Gilbert. “Since we work so closely together, there is a rhythm to our discharge sessions,” she said, “and parents seem to appreciate having both disciplines reinforcing the same recommendations.” 

Dr. Black is now collecting data on the impact the team has on infant feeding. Anecdotally, however, she said she’s seen greater success at getting babies to take oral feeds more quickly since implementing the team concept.