A Rockingham-area health center has used local grant funding to purchase equipment to monitor and treat jaundice in newborn babies. WMRA's Randi B. Hagi reports.
Healthy Community Health Centers has outpatient clinics in Harrisonburg and Elkton. In an exam room at their Park View location, Pediatric Nurse Practitioner Rachel Kime holds a transcutaneous bilirubinometer – a handheld device about the size of a TV remote.
RACHEL KIME: We use it on newborns to check the level of bilirubin, and that's a protein in the blood that is commonly elevated when they're born. … There's a light here on the end, and we just tap it to the middle of their chest. [device clicks]
If the protein builds up, it causes jaundice.
KIME: It's normal to have some jaundice … but we want to make sure that the level's not rising too quickly. … The ultimate worst would be kernicterus, which is an overwhelming amount of bilirubin in the blood that can cause brain damage, developmental delays, and worse.
This device measures the bilirubin painlessly, with light. Before the clinic got one earlier this year, they had to take a blood sample from the baby's heel, as Dr. Sarah Goodwin explains.
DR. SARAH GOODWIN: It makes a big difference for me and for the families. … If we don't have that device, we have to poke them, we have to collect blood, we have to send it out. The results, we often don't get back until the evening.
The health center won a $16,000 grant last year from The Community Foundation of Harrisonburg and Rockingham, which paid for this device and several "bili blankets," flexible, jelly-textured panels that wrap around a baby's torso and emit a cool, blue light.
KIME: The parents just put it around the baby all the time and it uses UV lights to help eliminate the bilirubin.
Kime said they see a baby who needs the 'blanket' about once a month. As a federally qualified health center, HCHC provides medical care regardless of a patient's ability to pay, and receives a federal grant that covers about a tenth of their budget. So far, this grant has not been affected by federal healthcare spending cuts.
