Website Helps You Save Babies

A free Texas-based website will help physicians and hospitals comply with a new state law requiring all newborn babies to be screened for critical congenital heart disease (CCHD).

The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio and the Texas Pediatric Society also plan to have this information on their websites in the future.

The site is part of the Texas Pulse Oximetry Project (TxPOP) that Baylor College of Medicine, Texas Children's Hospital, UT-San Antonio, and 12 other birthing facilities in South Texas and the Houston area established in 2012 in anticipation of the legislation. TxPOP trains nurses, physicians, and other health care professionals at delivering hospitals in Texas on CCHD newborn screening using pulse oximetry. Alice Gong, MD, at UT-San Antonio School of Medicine, and Charleta Guillory, MD, at Baylor, members of the TxPOP Project, developed the materials.

TMA Immediate Past President Michael E. Speer, MD, medical director of the Neonatal Nurse Practitioner Program at Texas Children's Hospital and professor of pediatrics and ethics at Baylor, says similar sites in other states "charge a significant amount of money to provide the same information."


Action, July 15, 2013

Last Updated On

June 20, 2016

Originally Published On

July 10, 2013

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