In a new report, the Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council says the number of newborn babies who were hospitalized for drug withdrawal at birth went down last year.
1,833 newborns with the condition called Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome (NAS) were admitted to hospitals in the state, down from 1,912 admissions in 2017. Admissions with NAS had risen dramatically for more than ten years, due to the opioid epidemic. That’s 1 rate of 14.4 with NAS per 1,000 newborn hospital stays.
In Indiana County, there were 13 babies admitted with NAS, a rate of 19.0.
The average hospital stay for babies suffering from withdrawal was 15.9 days, compared to only 3.4 days for babies admitted for other reasons.
Newborns in rural counties had an admission rate for NAS of 20.3. In urban counties, the rate was 12.6. Nineteen counties in the commonwealth are considered urban. The other 48 are rural, including Indiana County and all of our neighbors except Westmoreland.
The rate of newborns admitted for drug withdrawal in Armstrong County was 26.5 (13 babies); in Cambria County, 23.3 (28 babies); Clearfield 19.7 (13 babies); Jefferson 9.2 (although the number of NAS babies and newborn babies admitted overall was too small to report); and Westmoreland 17.3 (50 babies).
