GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — It’s an exciting month for Corewell Health as the health care system celebrates the 50th anniversary of its neonatal intensive care unit, the first to open in West Michigan.
“When I started there was, I don’t even know that we counted beds, but there were maybe 30 spaces,” said Vicki Cook, who has been a NICU nurse at Corewell Health Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital in Grand Rapids.
Now, the Gerber Foundation Neonatal Center is a level IV, 108-bed regional NICU that annually admits more than 1,200 babies from 38 counties in Michigan.
“It’s just grown size-wise, staff-wise, and technology has changed so much,” Cook said. “Stuff that we thought was the best for kids 40 years ago, we found out it’s not, it wasn’t good, but it was the best we knew. So things have totally changed.”
Volunteers support patient care at Grand Rapids children’s hospital
It’s now one of few neonatal centers in the country to have a designated space for micropreemies.
“It’s amazing that the viability of babies, like 28 weeks or so when I started (decades ago), we didn’t basically do anything for. We’ve learned so much,” Cook said. “Now 28-weekers, they’re even too old for our small baby unit. Now it’s the 22-weekers.”