Hi guys. In our facility we have this recurring problem of patients coming to the ED from a local detox facility on 'EC' holds. I've been told by some supervisors that we cannot honor this hold and forcefully retain these people when they want to leave since our docs didn't issue the hold.. but my department (security) wants to honor the outside facility's hold. What makes it more complicated is that this is Colorado, which of course means there are three possible holds that pts can be on.
It's really a grey area for us and I was hoping to get some outside input. The general feeling is that if an outside facility wants to keep custody of a pt, they should send a sitter with them like law enforcement or state agencies do. It should also be noted that a lot of these pts coming from the private detox facility are actually coming here for med seeking purposes.
