The Women’s Life Center at Newman Regional Health has gone digital with its photos of newborn infants and has put in place extra safety measures to ensure infants don’t get delivered to the wrong mother.
Beau Hawe, director of the Women’s Life Center, said a digital photography system was purchased earlier this year. The center’s old system used film and there was no way to preview the pictures. Newman has a Web nursery where infants’ pictures are posted. With film photography, it would take days or even weeks before the pictures could be posted. Sometimes, pictures got lost.
Hawe said with the new system, parents sign release forms allowing their infant’s picture to be posted on the Web, a picture is snapped and within eight hours the picture is on the Web.
“It’s wonderful,” she said. “If we don’t like the pictures we can re-take them and we can delete the ones that look awful.”
Hawe said a big benefit of the system is instant access for family members who don’t live in the area, especially family members in the military.
“If (you) have a husband in Iraq, he can be seeing it in eight hours,” Hawe said. “It’s nice to have people’s family who are not around be able to see them. It’s a wonderful system. I can just imagine the frustration they had with the system before.”
Vickie Ortega, LPN at Newman, took Andres Luis Moreno’s photo before he went home on Thursday. Andres, who was born on July 28 at Newman, is the son of Angela Price and Luis Moreno. The pictures were viewed instantly on a screen and could be re-taken if they didn’t turn out well. Andres’ parents were given a proof sheet of the photos and now can order the photos from the company.
Newman also has a new electronic security system for infants. The system uses an ankle band for the infant and a wrist band for the mother. If the infant is taken to the wrong mother, an alarm goes off.
“If you would happen to get the wrong baby in the wrong room, it would beep at you and alarm our system,” Hawe said.
Hawe said the complete system was put into place on Monday. The hospital has had the infant security system in place for more than a year. The mother side of the system to match the two was just put into play this week. Price was one of the first mothers this week to use the complete system.