The Utah Department of Health and Human Services has honored Intermountain Logan Regional Hospital caregivers for their work to ensure newborns at the hospital receive vital hearing tests.
Logan Hospital received the Early Hearing Detection and Intervention Director’s Award, which given annually to a Utah hospital for outstanding achievements in all aspects of newborn hearing, screening, and follow-up care.
“One in 300 babies will have a hearing loss which is the most common birth defect,” said Teresa Shaffer, newborn hearing coordinator at Logan Hospital. “The first years of life are so important for language and speech skills in a newborn’s development which is why identifying hearing loss early is so important.”
Caregivers are required to perform a hearing test on a newborn before they leave the hospital, and if they find any issues, a follow up appointment must be completed within seven to ten days to retest the child’s hearing.
If a baby fails, the outpatient screening the team of caregivers must assist the family to other hospital services for further testing before the child is 21 days old.
Intermountain Logan Regional Hospital scored 100 percent compliance for newborns in four of the five testing categories — scoring 98 percent in the other category only because the patient’s family moved and couldn’t complete follow up testing.
“Until this type of testing was in place the average age for identifying hearing loss in children was over two years old,” said Steven Jensen, AuD, an audiologist at Intermountain Logan Regional Hospital. “We’ve dramatically shortened time of detection and intervention, allowing children to receive care to develop speech and language still commensurate with their peers.”
For more information on Intermountain Logan Regional Hospital’s women’s health services, go here.
About Intermountain Health
Headquartered in Utah with locations in six states and additional operations across the western U.S., Intermountain Health is a not-for-profit system of 34 hospitals, approximately 400 clinics, medical groups with some 4,600 employed physicians and advanced care providers, a health plans division called Select Health with more than one million members, and other health services. Helping people live the healthiest lives possible, Intermountain is committed to improving community health and is widely recognized as a leader in transforming healthcare by using evidence-based best practices to consistently deliver high-quality outcomes at sustainable costs. For up-to-date information and announcements, please see the Intermountain Health newsroom at https://intermountainhealthcare.org/news.
