More than 80% of emergency departments are not fully prepared for pediatric cases, despite the fact that children make up about 20% of visits each year. The new analysis, published in JAMA Open Network, estimated that if every emergency department in the United States had the core features of 'pediatric readiness,' more than a quarter of the child deaths that follow E.R. visits could be prevented, a figure that equates to thousands of young lives each year.
