Factors contributing to patients’ presentation to the emergency department of an academic hospital in Oman after leaving other hospitals against medical advice

Background: One of the reasons to leave against medical advice (LAMA) from a hospital is to seek treatment in another hospital(1). Those patients are at high risk of readmission and mortality compared to patients with planned discharge(2). 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. We designed the questionnaire by reviewing the literature on second opinion, patient's satisfaction, and LAMA(3–5). The questionnaire underwent a content validation by two experts. We investigated the outcomes of the presentations by reviewing the patients' medical charts. We used descriptive statistics to analyse the data. Results: A total of 112 patients presented to SQUH ED after LAMA from other hospitals. 94 of them participated, while 18 patients were excluded. There was equal male to female distribution among the participants and their mean age was 36.8 years (SD = 26.483). Figure 1 illustrates the previous hospitals where patients LAMA. The majority of patients (66.0%) were LAMA from governorate hospitals. Table 1 presents the factors of presentation to SQUH ED. The most common factor to present to SQUH ED (94.7%) was to get the quality of care delivered in SQUH. Out of 94 patients, 70 (74.5%) were admitted to SQUH. More than one-third of the admitted patients (35.7%) required management in critical care units. Conclusion: This study provides the factors that lead LAMA patients to choose an academic tertiary hospital for their second presentation. Identifying these factors can help the decision makers in the healthcare system in Oman to increase the quality of services in other healthcare facilities. Providing more healthcare facilities with diagnostic modalities like Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and in some places even Computed Tomography (CT) imaging may help decrease the incidence of LAMA. Also considering the addition of diagnostic and therapeutic units (for example: endoscopic suites and angiography suites) may allow for better health services in these hospitals and therefore minimize the occurrence of LAMA. Furthermore, allowing for and addressing the need for second opinion in some patients and organizing for that formally between different specialties in these hospitals may improve the patient satisfaction and therefore reduce the incidence of LAMA. Ultimately all the previously mentioned interventions can minimize the morbidity and mortality associated with LAMA. The study can also act as a pilot for larger multicentered studies.