Watsonville (Calif.) Community Hospital has temporarily suspended operations at its neonatal intensive care unit amid ongoing nursing shortages, according to an Aug. 19 KSBW 8 report.
The Level II NICU has been unavailable for several weeks. Hospital officials did not provide an exact reopening date but said they expect it will take several more weeks to stabilize staffing.
While the unit is closed, infants requiring additional care can be transferred to Dominican Hospital in Santa Cruz, Calif., which operates the nearest Level III NICU, or Natividad Medical Center in Salinas, Calif. Newborns with more critical medical needs may be transferred to Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford.
The closure adds to a number of hospitals that have suspended or ended services this year because of staffing and financial pressures, including several maternal and newborn care units. Nassau University Medical Center in East Meadow, N.Y., for example, suspended its obstetrics program in May following a patient safety review and reopened it in June as a limited program for low-risk patients.
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