Ebola: NY had jump-start, Dallas crash course.

Byline: Lauran Neergaard and David B. Caruso

NEW YORK -- Talk about a tale of two cities: A Dallas hospital got a pop quiz in Ebola and made an early mistake. New York got a peek at the answer sheet and was better prepared at the start.

The contrast in handling two Ebola diagnoses highlights how differently cities and hospitals prepare for health emergencies.

''The lesson I would take from New York is you have to practice,'' Dr. Amesh Adalja, a representative of the Infectious Diseases Society of America. ''Preparedness isn't something you just make a plan for and put it on the shelf.''

Ebola came to New York via a doctor who had volunteered to treat patients in Ebola-stricken Guinea. Dr. Craig Spencer alerted his aid agency that he had developed a fever, and was transported to Bellevue Hospital Center by specially trained emergency workers wearing protective gear.

In Dallas last month, a hospital initially sent home a sick Thomas Eric Duncan, who had traveled from Liberia and who days later would become the nation's first Ebola diagnosis.

A look at differences between the two cases:

HOW NEW YORK PREPARED

New York health officials are known for holdings drills on handling emergencies, and Ebola is no exception. Bellevue, the country's oldest public hospital, had been preparing in earnest for an Ebola patient since August.

The patient registration staff and triage nurses were trained to ask people with certain symptoms about international travel. Actors posed as patients to be sure that anyone who answered ''yes'' was immediately put into one of the ER's nine isolation rooms. Along the way came some false alarms, sick patients who turned out not to have Ebola.

On the seventh floor is the full isolation unit, originally set up to treat people with drug-resistant tuberculosis. It was overhauled for Ebola in recent weeks and now houses a separate lab for Ebola-infected specimens.

Bellevue isn't alone. New York health authorities designated eight hospitals statewide as capable of properly caring for suspected Ebola patients.

Beyond hospitals, the city's fire department trained an ambulance crew to transport suspected Ebola patients, and 911 dispatchers now ask people calling for an ambulance if they've traveled to West Africa recently.

Also, ''New York has the benefit of being the second city to have an imported Ebola case,'' Adalja said.

LESSONS LEARNED

Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas has apologized for initially misdiagnosing...