• Printer-friendly Perinatal Clinical Measure 3: Newborn Followup Detail Sheet (Acrobat/pdf)

# of newborns with documented follow-up to a provider within 14 days of birth date.

Note: Encounter with provider (pediatrician, family or general practitioner, NP or PA under licensed supervision) may be at hospital clinic, community clinic, etc. and should documented as to locale. If twins or more from single pregnancy, any one visit counts. This data can be provided from the MIS data of the grantee.

# perinatal users per UDS table 7 line 19, column h (however this line is for “deliveries and does not specify if singleton or multiple; nor whether it was a live birth); or MIS system or other comparable source.

National Numeric Benchmark:

From registry or EHR/EMR if available.

If chart audit, then sample from the sample frame of persons meeting denominator criteria.

Denominator is readily available from MIS due to reporting requirements for UDS and others. Current UDS reports newborn follow-up at 4 weeks which is not the current professional societies recommendation, but some centers have the data for 2-week since this is longtime clinical practice standard. Otherwise will require sampling and manual record abstraction.

The need for this time-honored first baby appointment cannot be overemphasized. This visit between newborn, parents/caregivers and health care provider focuses on not only the general health and well being of the baby, with immediate attention to areas such as nutrition, weight gain, behavior (including sleep patterns), but also to health education and other issues and concerns of all family members. This “first baby visit” is a good proxy for the entire perinatal period, coordinating with and transitioning from with the hospital and post-partum obstetric services.

This measure may evolve as the 2005 American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) guidelines shorten the time for the newborn visit to 2-5 days post hospital discharge.

The OPR review team will need in their CY2006 visits to allow lag time for clinical implementation and one year of data. We anticipate that since the guideline changed in mid-2005, implementation will occur in 2006, and the measure will change in 2007.

see:
http://aappolicy.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/pediatrics;114/1/297
http://aappolicy.aappublications.org/cgi/content/abstract/pediatrics;114/1/e130
http://aappolicy.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/pediatrics;113/5/1434