Please Contact Us if you cannot find an answer to your question(s)
You and your family are eligible if your baby was admitted to the NICU for several days or more.
Since your baby was in the NICU, this means your baby’s condition was serious enough at birth that health and development should be monitored more closely than most infants.
Concerns addressed early often can be resolved much more satisfactorily than those that remain unresolved until later in life. Sometimes it can be reassuring just to hear that your baby is doing fine.
Once you have received all the information you need about this program, you will be asked to sign a release of information.
This allows us to exchange information with your baby’s primary physician, the hospital and the UNMC Munroe- Meyer Institute which will be responsible for working with you to arrange follow-up and collect outcome information.
The answer is YES! Developmental TIPS does not take the place of seeing your regular doctor, but because of your baby’s unique NICU experience, having a specialized team to help monitor your baby’s development is an essential part of follow-up care.
1. Follow-up Questionnaire
Babies who have had a fairly smooth NICU experience will be followed by a developmental questionnaire. This questionnaire will be sent to your home around four key periods of development: 6 months, 16 months, 2 years, and 3 years of age.
These times will be based on corrected age for premature babies through two years of age. Families will be asked to complete and return the survey for scoring.
2. Follow-up by Developmental Screening
Those babies whose hospital stay was more complicated will be asked to come to a clinic during the same key periods for developmental screening by a team of specialists.
3. Follow-up by Comprehensive Assessment
Sometimes your health care team will recommend that your baby be evaluated for services to help pro- mote his/her development through the local school district or Early Development Network. If your child qualifies for services, Developmental TIPS will still contact you to obtain follow-up information. In some situations, your physician may recommend that your baby be seen in clinic so that the developmental pediatrician can evaluate him/her.
Six clinic sites will be available in three cities across the state of Nebraska:
• Lincoln (two clinic locations*)
• Omaha (three clinic locations*)
• Scottsbluff
At this time there is no cost to families for any of the follow-up activities. However, families who were recommended for developmental screening in a clinic by the NICU at Bryan Health will have the option of receiving a questionnaire at no cost, attending a no-cost clinic in Omaha, or attending the NICU follow-up clinic at Bryan Health that does bill for its services.