Avoiding 'baby boy' on hospital IDs may reduce errors

Avoiding hospital IDs that say "baby boy" or "baby girl" when parents haven't chosen a first name for their newborn may help reduce medical errors, a study suggests. As a marker of potential mistakes, researchers analyzed how often doctors order tests, procedures or drugs for one newborn baby and then quickly retract it and place the same order for a different newborn. At Montefiore Health System in the Bronx, in two neonatal intensive care units, they compared this so-called "retract and reorder" rate for one year before and after the hospital changed its ID system for newborns.