The University of Chicago Medical Center has agreed to pay $7 million to resolve allegations that it overcrowded its neonatal intensive care unit (“NICU”), thereby exposing infants to a risk of infection. 

The medical center said that it exceeded capacity in order to help as many infants as possible, that no babies were harmed, and that the practice ended in 2005.  However, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan filed a case in 2006 claiming that the hospital’s practice of “double bunking” put newborns at risk of infection and violated health regulation. 

Of the settlement, $5.1 million will go to neighborhood clinics that provide health services for poor expectant mothers in Chicago’s South Side and $500,000 will go to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid.

Ms. Madigan’s office was notified about this situation by two former nurses at the medical center.  The whistleblowers will share $1.4 million of the settlement.

Click here to read the full article, “University of Chicago hospital pays $7M to settle suit over NICU crowding”