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Hospital outcomes have long been scrutinized for indicators of reduced quality of care at night, on weekends, and during the months of July and August. In a retrospective population-based cohort study, investigators examined the association between time of delivery and neonatal encephalopathy (NE) using a linked birth and death certificate database of 1,864,766 newborns (gestational age, ≥36 weeks) delivered in California from 1999 through 2002. NE was identified in 2131 infants (1.1 per 1000 term live births); 16% died within a month of birth.
Compared with daytime delivery, nighttime delivery (defined as 7:00 PM–6:59 AM, and accounting for 33% of total deliveries) was associated with significantly increased risk for NE (odds ratio, 1.1), w…