The purpose of this acquisition is to accept an unsolicited proposal from the National Perinatal information Center to use its proprietary hospital data base to conduct further analyses of mortality, morbidity, and cost in neonatal intensive care involving surfactant treatment. The proprietary database, upon which the National Perinatal Information Center will conduct the analyses, is truly unique, in that it consists of extensive data on all births in 14 leading tertiary perinatal centers. included among the data elements collected are birth weight, age, race, payer, discharge disposition as reflected by up to fifteen diagnosis codes from which specific types of morbidity can be identified, and information on charges, costs, and length of stay so that specific issues of resource use and treatment costs can be assessed. Data are now available for all of the 14 participating centers for the period beginning in 1985 and continuing through June 1992. Under a previous contract, the offeror compared issues of morbidity, mortality, and cost of treatment for the period before general use of surfactant (1985-1989) and 1990. Now that an additional year and one-half of data are available for the period after general use of surfactant began, it will be possible to develop better estimates of the impact of surfactant therapy on morbidity, mortality, and cost of treatment in neonatal intensive care.
