Background: One of the reasons to leave against medical advice (LAMA) from a hospital is to seek treatment in another hospital1. Those patients are at high risk of readmission and mortality compared to patients with planned discharge2. The aim of this study was to identify the factors for patients’ presentations to an academic tertiary hospital Emergency Department (ED) specifically after LAMA from another hospital and to investigate the outcomes of these presentations. Methods: We conducted a prospective cross-sectional study. We included all patients who presented to Sultan Qaboos University Hospital (SQUH) ED after LAMA from other hospitals in Oman during the six-month study period. We excluded patients who died during hospitalization, those who refused to give consent, and those who were identified only after their ED visits’ by reviewing the ED medical records’ and were difficult to be contacted. We asked the participants to fill a paper-based questionnaire to investigate the factors of their presentations to SQUH ED.

Background: One of the reasons to leave against medical advice (LAMA) from a hospital is to seek treatment in another hospital1. Those patients are at high risk of readmission and mortality compared to patients with planned discharge2. The aim of this study was to identify the factors for pat...