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Nurse home visits decreased infant emergency care
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Home visits from a nurse, although expensive, decreased emergency care episodes compared with children without home visits, according to study results published in Pediatrics.
Kenneth A. Dodge, PhD, and colleagues from the Center for Child and Family Policy at Duke University examined Durham Connect, a program that provides home visits for newborns and their parents in Durham, N.C. Through the program, nurses visit new parents soon after the newborn comes home from the hospital, check the health of the mother and newborn, and offer tips related to breast-feeding and child care. They also screen for potential maternal depression. During a series of one to three visits, the nurses can also link families who need extra help to the appropriate community services.
All 4,777 infants born in Durham County between July 1, 2009, and Dec. 31, 2010, were randomly assigned: even birth-date families were given home visits and odd birth-date families were the controls.
Dodge and colleagues found that the intervention group had 50% fewer emergency care episodes in the first year of life compared with the control group (P<.001).
“This preventive impact holds for all groups of families studied, including both privately insured and Medicaid or uninsured families, suggesting the benefits of providing short-term postnatal nurse home visiting universally in a community,” the researchers wrote. “This program complements more intensive home visiting models by serving as a screening and triage tool that ensures optimal matching of families with long-term services only as needed.”
Disclosure: The study was funded in part by The Duke Endowment, NIH, and the Pew Center on the States. The researchers report no relevant financial disclosures.
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