How much of a good thing do we need?

[Mary Murphy]

From the recent New England Journal of Medicine: "Despite marked regional variation in the availability of neonatal intensive care, it is not known whether the supply of neonatologists or neonatal intensive care beds is associated with neonatal mortality. This retrospective cohort study involved almost 3.9 million U.S. infants with a birth weight of 500 g or greater who were born in 1995. As compared with infants born in regions with a very low supply of neonatologists (2.7 per 10,000 births), those from regions with a low supply of neonatologists (4.3 per 10,000 births) were less likely to die in the first 27 days of life. However, further increases in the supply of neonatologists were not associated with greater reductions in risk.  An Interesting article.  MM