Impediments to incubator home care in The Netherlands

OBJECTIVE: To determine whether incubator home care is desirable and feasible. DESIGN: Inventory. SETTING: Four neonatal units representative of the type of care in general hospitals in the Netherlands. METHOD: The relevant data on all infants with a birth weight < or = 2000 g admitted in the last 3 months of 1996 to one of four hospitals were analysed. Conditions for incubator home care were determined (e.g. absence of need for special care, vital function monitoring or nasogastric tube feeding). RESULTS: Forty-nine infants were enrolled. Mean hospital stay was 28.7 days in an incubator plus 19.7 days in a cot. When infants were placed in a cot they usually still needed tube feeding and monitoring of vital functions and sometimes parenteral nutrition, medication or extra oxygen which made home discharge impossible. Therefore a pilot study of actual home care could not be carried out. CONCLUSION: Although early home discharge is very desirable for newborn infants, the number of infants eligible for incubator home care is so small that further attempts to organise it are not useful.