Preventing Prematurity:
What's Work Got To Do With It?

November is Prematurity Awareness Month!

There are many things that a mother can do to prevent her baby from coming too soon, but the buck doesn't stop with mom. Employers have a vested interest in preventing this unhealthy and costly outcome.

Since stress plays a role in prematurity, creating family friendly work environments can help decrease the risk to the pregnant employee and reduce health care costs for the employer.

According to the March of Dimes "eleven percent of newborns covered by employer health plans are born prematurely."

Take a look at the numbers from Medstat's MarketScan database, developed for the March of Dimes.

Employers pay around $41,000 dollars in inpatient stays, physician office visits, and drugs for premature babies, compared to $2,830 for full-term healthy babies.
Premature babies spend 16.8 days in the hospital versus 2.3 days for full-term babies, and make 3 more doctor visits in the first year.
Mothers of premature babies also spend more time (10.2 days) on short-term disability, costing employers between $1,513 and $2,766 more per birth.

This means that the average additional cost to an employer per premature birth vs. full-term birth to an employee is $41,546.

For a sample of Family Friendly Work Environment Policies click here.