Are there any established National Guidelines or Standards for storage temperature of expressed breastmilk for hospitalized infants that would be required by JCAHO or US Dept of Health, etc? 

Other than purchasing a commercial freezer for ~$7000, is there anything that keeps the milk at an acceptable temperature and can be documented as such? We have a 19 bed Level 2 NICU. Average census is ~10, length of storage is ~2 weeks and the maximum is 6 weeks. The stock is rotated. Our bio-med dept has been working with our current freezer but have not been able to get it to maintain -20 degrees C (Auerbach, 1999 p. 454). Our NICU manager has been doing research on different freezers and she has not found one that will maintain temp that low except for a very expensive commercial freezer.

This may not be a problem for hospitals with large NICUs who can justify the cost of a commercial freezer. I'd really appreciate responses from anyone who can tell me what smaller hospitals are doing. We just had our JCAHO survey and they didn't even ask, but we'd still like to document that we are meeting a Standard if there is one.

Amy Mueller, BSN, RN, IBCLC
Traverse City, Michigan, USA
[log in to unmask]
[log in to unmask]

             ***********************************************
The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(TM)
mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html