Rather than threaten a lawsuit, I’d threaten kidnapping charges
(I’ve heard stories of time share or other high pressure sales where they won’t let you leave – same deal)
Brian
In general, parents can not take their children out of the hospital against medical advice. Usually the hospital ethics people and lawyers get involved at that point.
Sent from my XT1585 using Tapatalk
I know you said ‘in general’, but I’ve seen it happen plenty of times. An exception would be if the child was medically unstable or there was a concern about abuse or neglect (CPS involvement).
mmm
bolding mine
That’s just Tuesday night. :eek:
Our hospital has to deal with psych holds because there is no separate mental health facility. Police will sometimes threaten an arrest under the Mental Health Law in order to encourage someone to go with the ambulance crew “voluntarily”. But if such a patient gets up and insists on leaving right away the hospital staff will call 9-1-1 to get a police officer there to make an arrest.
The OP is certainly not in the UK. The hospital is only concerned with treating people for medical problems. Beds are a scarce resource and they would have been discharged, computer or not.
No, most people know that the OP is most likely never coming back.
My wife did it. This was in Montreal though. He was 18 months old and there was really no reason to subject him to another night in the hospital. They did not try to stop her.
Well, I most certainly did. It was 3 days post appendectomy. She was eating, using the bathroom, walking around the ward, and we were both very bored. She was receiving no treatment at all. Also the teenager in the next bed had an alarm going off at least once an hour. (She was apparently there for administration of some medication that had a very narrow window of ineffective/effective/overdose.) We were both cranky from lack of sleep.
I informed the people in charge that we were leaving in a half hour unless they could demonstrate a need for her to stay. The doctor then arrived, having been “too busy” to come by earlier. He rather huffily said that if something went wrong I’d have to bring her back. So, I’ll bring her back if that happens. He told us to make an appointment to come to his office in a week for suture removal. “Will it hurt?” my daughter asked. “Yes,” he responded. [asshat]
There are several clues that this is not the whole story.
I’ve heard this too. I’ve also heard that it’s not true but rather something the hospital staff says in order to get all the paperwork signed off on. Could someone in the health field or in insurance confirm or deny this?
I’m neither, but it’s bullshit.
http://www.uchospitals.edu/news/2012/20120203-billing.html
http://thehappyhospitalist.blogspot.com/2011/05/will-my-insurance-pay-if-i-leave.html
I very nearly went AMA when I had my gallbladder yanked. It was supposed to be same day surgery, but I’d just (like 2 weeks before) been diagnosed with apnea. The surgeon said that there was a need for constant blood oxygen monitoring because people with apnea didn’t always recover from anesthesia. Fine… but they didn’t do the monitoring, and they (well, he) botched the orders for my routine medication. Aside from the availability of IV pain medication, I would absolutely have been better off at home.
I asked in the morning what time the doctor would be by to discharge me. The nurse said “Oh, any time in the afternoon - could be as late as 4”. I said “I’m leaving at noon whether someone has discharged me or not”. I suppose they could have refused to write me a scrip for pain medication - but they’d given THAT to my husband the day before so we already had it filled.
I work for an insurance company and you are correct. No insurance company is going to pay for a single day of in-patient hospital care until the hospital has the clinicals to back up medical necessity.
Though I found when my son was born, if the hospital charges something that IS routine, even if it’s fraudulent, insurance will pay and won’t take the patient’s word for it that the charge was never incurred. They billed me for 2 days stay, I left after 1, insurance paid 2 days, I called them, and they shrugged and said there was nothing they could do.
Surprisingly, the hospital actually acted when I called THEM to complain… about the only thing they did right during that whole experience (yeah, I hate hospitals).
RivkahChaya has already answered by herself, but my thought upon reading your answer was “what if the cops are the ones who brought the patient, what ‘reporting’?” If the cops have been involved from the beginning, the hospital isn’t reporting anything other than “no, you’re not allowed to walk there with him”.
My answer was originally meant for the statement that "The hospital can hold someone who was in an auto accident until the person is cleared of fault, if the accident was serious enough that an arrest might be pending".
The police can arrest the person, of course, But the hospital cannot “hold” him.
I then tried to expand the answer to illustrate that the police and the hospital have different roles.
By “reporting” I meant what we tell the police. For instance, if a patient was brought in after being in an auto accident, it almost never matters to the hospital (rare exceptions) what happened or who was at fault. The police are not entitled to information such as blood alcohol level etc. They have to subpoena the hospital for his medical records.
I had to deal with a related situation once. One of our prisoners was out on community release. He used some drugs which is, of course, a violation of his release.
I found out about this when the hospital called me and told me he was in their ER being treated for an overdose. They said they couldn’t hold him once his treatment was done. Once he could stand up and walk out of the hospital, they would let him do so even though he would technically be an absconded felon at that point.
The hospital was far enough away that I couldn’t get any of my people there in time to take him into custody. I called the NYPD and they expressed no interest in helping out even when I offered to send them a warrant. I finally was able to convince a local prison to send some guards over and take the guy into custody and hold him until I could get my guards down there to pick him up.