Is there a time that you caught a patient sneaking out? how did you handle it?

I have never had a patient "escape" out a back door. HOWEVER...In todays environment I almost walked out myself with delay after delay of test and provider visits. Who wants to spend hours or extra days like I had to ... waiting for a discharge. They just added to my bill! Discharge is not the right time to teach anyone! Back in the day we use to know our patient and when the physician would make rounds . They would try very hard to be on-time and see the discharge patients first out of respect for the patient's time ! Never once was I asked if I had a ride or if the ride had a timeline to get me home! RESPECT first should eliminate this problem.

Patients elope all the time . If I see one trying to do so, I wither try to explain why they shouldn't leave right now or call hospital security to bring them back but legally, we are not allowed to force them to stay but if they leave an inpatient area that is supervised then we have to do an investigation; otherwise, the EMR states patient eloped or walked out AMA. In the ER and psych ER, we usually just wait a few days, they will come back worse off then they were before or, the psych patients will end up in another psych hospital or jail