SSM Health St. Mary’s Hospital – Madison also serves as a regional referral center. Hospitals throughout south-central Wisconsin turn to our NICU experts when they need advice about a patient. Newborns are often transferred to SSM Health St. Mary’s via helicopter or ambulance with our dedicated Neonatal transport team which includes a specially trained nurse, respiratory therapist and at times a Neonatologist/Neonatal Nurse Practitioner. Our team’s goal is to reduce infant morbidity and mortality while improving long term medical and developmental outcome in our patients. To achieve this goal, we are part of a multidisciplinary group participating in the Vermont Oxford Network. The Vermont Oxford Network is a group of more than 1200 hospitals collaborating to improve neonatal care around the world with data-driven quality improvement and research.
We stabilize infants in the delivery room as part of our focus on the golden hour. The “Golden hour” concept includes practicing evidence-based intervention for term and preterm neonates, in the initial sixty minutes of postnatal life for better long-term outcome. Initial first hour of neonatal life includes neonatal resuscitation, post-resuscitation care, transportation of sick newborn to neonatal intensive care unit, respiratory and cardiovascular support and initial course in nursery. The studies that evaluated the concept of golden hour in preterm neonates showed marked reduction in hypothermia, hypoglycemia, intraventricular hemorrhage (IVH), bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD), and retinopathy of prematurity (ROP).