Measuring Quality of Care in Moderate and Late Preterm Infants

OBJECTIVE: To examine quality measures for moderate and late preterm (MLP) infants. STUDY DESIGN: By prospectively analyzing Vermont Oxford Network’s all NICU admissions database, we adapted Baby-MONITOR, a composite quality measure for extremely/very preterm infants, for MLP infants. We examined correlations between the adapted MLP quality measure (MLP-QM) in MLP infants and Baby-MONITOR in extremely and very preterm infants. RESULT: We studied 376,219 MLP (30–36 weeks GA) and 57,595 extremely/very preterm (25–29 weeks GA) infants from 465 U.S. hospitals born from 2016 to 2020. MLP-QM summary scores in MLP infants had weak correlation with Baby-MONITOR scores in extremely and very preterm infants (r=0.47). There was weak correlation among survival (r=0.19), no pneumothorax (r=0.35), and no infection after 3 days (r=0.45), but strong correlation among human milk at discharge (r=0.79) and no hypothermia (r=0.76). CONCLUSION: Modest correlation among hospital care measures in two preterm populations suggests need for MLP-specific care measures.