Proactive palliative care consultation was associated with a significantly shorter MICU length of stay in this high-risk group without any significant differences in mortality rates or discharge disposition.

Further development will assemble implementation tools for quality measurement and benchmarking.

The evaluation of a newborn for an abnormal screening result was highly stressful for parents. To help reduce parents' distress, improvements in communications and clinical services are needed. Recommendations of useful Internet sites and discussions of this information may benefit parents. Tailoring counseling to meet the needs of culturally and educationally diverse families is needed. Families and infants with equivocal results are a new group of patients who merit comprehensive clinical follow-up.

There was no difference between approaches to duct clearance in terms of postoperative stay, complications, or conversion in higher risk patients, but the laparoscopic approach was more effective and efficient and avoided unnecessary procedures.