Policy on patient leaving AMA with IV in place

northshore08 · Jun 10, 2008

:clown: You are probably right....I think it's just that the pts who get ushered back by the cops don't realize they could refuse.

If they realized it, I guess it could usher in a whole new era of ED frequent flyers...sign in, get your iv, leave, etc... We could stop the clean needle programs all over the country and divert all that taxpayer money to the local community ED!!!

Might even lower the rates of HIV and hepatitis....

Sorry, it got away from me

trainer2070 · Jun 11, 2008

The LEO's we work with will bring the patient back only if they have physicians orders saying the person for x reason can not leave the hospital ie if they're being petitioned and bolt during the process. If the orders do exist then they want a faxed copy before they will do anything with the person. For the IV in place on the eloped patient they simply do a welfare check to inform the person they can go back to the hospital to have the IV removed. Then the officer will make contact with us and let us know if they were able to get a hold of the person. My dept works with them so much that we have a list of their policies that we deal with on a regular basis.

ZippyGBR, BSN, RN · Jun 11, 2008

so it's a wate of tax dollars for a police officer to call past someone's house and check they are Ok ...

what is the primary purpose of the police service?

i was under the impression that it is to protect Life and Property

miko014 · Jun 11, 2008

We had a guy leave after being discharged but before the paperwork was complete and his IV had been removed. Why? He was mad at the docs for not giving him the prescriptions he wanted. We tried to make contact, called security, called admissions, paged overhead, etc. Pt knew he was supposed to stay but didn't. We waited 4 hours and he didn't come back. Charted it, etc. What's the story on that? He didn't leave AMA - he was discharged, he just left w/o paperwork/scripts. Didn't respond to calls, etc. So what then?