State Rejects Northern Kentucky NICU Request

Kentucky officials have rejected St. Elizabeth Healthcare’s application to open a top-level neonatal intensive care unit in Edgewood. St. Elizabeth has been fighting for more than a year to open the unit, which would provide ventilation and other services to babies born between 28 and 32 weeks of gestation. But the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services ruled late Wednesday that while St. Elizabeth demonstrated the NICU would benefit Northern Kentucky, it did not prove that families needing the service could not get medical care at Cincinnati hospitals or elsewhere in Kentucky.