A free parking trial to increase visitation and improve extremely low birth weight infant outcomes

Objective:frequent parental visits are likely to benefit infants in a neonatal intensive care unit (nicu), particularly extremely low birth weight (elbw; ⩽1000 g) survivors. parking costs (⩾$10 per visit in our center) may deter visitation, especially for low-income parents. we assessed whether free parking (fp) decreased survivors’ length of stay (los).study design:parents (n=138) of elbw infants (7 to 14 days old) were randomized to usual care (uc; n=66) or fp (n=72). the primary outcome was los.results:among survivors (n=116), los was not significantly less with fp than uc (means: fp=89, uc=102 days, p=0.22; medians: fp=82, uc=84 days, p=0.30). groups did not differ significantly on proportion of visit days (fp=0.69, uc=0.72, p=0.47), parental involvement, knowledge/skills and satisfaction. post hoc analyses found that parents with a greater income, a car and fewer children visited more.conclusion:more potent interventions than fp are needed to increase parental visits and reduce los for elbw infants in disadvantaged urban populations.