Emergency Departments not the same, but that doesn't mean they're bad.

I came back to this article after reading it yet again. While the young child in this story clearly wasn’t treated with pediatric size medical equipment which I don’t understand. The story leads patients to expect more than may be available at their hospital.

Not all hospitals have all services. Community hospitals are limited in their scope of services for many reasons such as money, available providers, costs of providing services, and a demonstrated need for services which the state typically authorizes.

With the exception of large medical centers most emergency departments only have emergency trained physicians. All other services are usually available through an on call basis and are consulted at the discretion of the emergency department physician.

Many hospitals provide excellent emergency pediatric services. The CNN story demonstrates a bias and is misleading