[mewzilla]

I’ve no brief for Big Med, but I suspect there’s a lot more to this story.

It can harder to discharge patients than people think.

[mewzilla]

From March, possibly related...

Prevalence of Delayed Discharge Among Patients Admitted to the Internal Medicine Wards: A Cross-Sectional Study

[BikerJoe]

It can harder to discharge patients than people think.

Maybe once admitted to a room, but once my wife and I just walked out of an ER.

Forget what the problem was that time, but it was bad enough that she went by ambulance to the ER around midnight. She got in to a room in the ER right away. Had her vitals taken by a nurse but didn't hook her to a monitor. Wait for a Doctor to see her. One hour. Two hours. Three hours. Finally, around 3:30, she seemed to be better and still no Doctor. I told her "If you live until 9am we can see your PCP." She said "Let's get out of here." and we told a nurse we were leaving and just left.

But, of course, there were no monitor connections to yank off, no ports to extract.

And we were at her Doctor's office right at 9am. She examined her, prescribed something, and that was it.

To be fair, the hospital had a couple of ER Doctors out sick, so they were short staffed.

[lastchance]

He was not discharged. He signed out AME.