CON: Department Bed Inventories, July 1, 2023, Published

Does MDHHS know something we don't about future need for NICU beds?

From my inbox today:

The Department Bed Inventories for Certificate of Need (CON), July 1, 2023, have been published on the Department's website. The NICU Bed Inventory contains updated bed need numbers.

 For more information, please visit the website at www.michigan.gov/con.

If you have any questions regarding the Bed Inventories, please contact the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, CON Evaluation Section at MDHHS-CONProjects@michigan.gov.

Urban legend has a woman getting coupons for Pampers and infant formula before she knew she was pregnant. In bureaucratic fashion, the State of Michigan only dreams of data immediacy that industry marketers take for granted. 

Their real data is neither immediate nor futuristic. To quote from a May publication,

May 12, 2023 Summary The NICU bed need methodology was implemented using the birth data from 2021. Statewide, the number of beds needed was 468, which is well below the 654 current NICU beds. The detailed results by NICU Planning Area are presented in Table 1.

In other words, the State of Michigan decides whether to permit more NICU beds based upon two-year-old birth data.

As if that weren't remote enough from bedside care in Michigan, the data was formulated by the Department of Geography, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

https://www.michigan.gov/mdhhs/-/media/Project/Websites/mdhhs/Doing-Business-with-MDHHS/Health-Care-Providers/Certificate-of-Need/CON-Commission/Commission-Meetings/2023-Meetings/06_15_23-Commission-Meeting/Delamater_NICU_bed_need_report_2023.pdf

We've come a long way from the Invisible Hand of Adam Smith's market economy.