Quantifying The Where And How Long Of Newborn Care

* Abbreviation:\n RU-IP — : resource use inflection point\n\nIn this issue of Pediatrics , Goldin et al1 report their exploration of a “resource use inflection point” (RU-IP) for infants in 43 NICUs. They define the RU-IP as the day of stay on which daily charges dropped to \u003c10% of the first-day NICU room cost and remained there through just before discharge. Most of their patient sample remained in the hospital even after the RU-IP was reached, and 24% of NICU days occurred after this point.\n\nIn this study, two important issues are highlighted. First, the authors document substantial variation in the timing of discharge between institutions, as defined by the number of days after reaching this milestone of lower resource use (and, implicitly, lower illness acuity). Assuming that the patient populations in these institutions were similar, such variation would suggest that there is potential to reduce resource use by standardizing discharge criteria and practices, as has been done in many other areas of medicine. Second, researchers in this publication join others who argue that … \n\nAddress correspondence to John A.F. Zupancic, MD ScD, 330 Brookline Ave, Rose 333, Boston, MA 02215. E-mail: jzupanci{at}bidmc.harvard.edu