This Statistical Brief presents data from the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP) on hospital stays that ended with the patient leaving AMA in 2007. Utilization, resource, and patient characteristics of these hospitalizations are presented and compared to characteristics of all other non-maternal, non-newborn hospital stays.2 The most common reasons for AMA stays, as well as variations by patient location and geographic region, are provided. Differences between estimates noted in the text are statistically significant at the 0.05 level or better.

Hospitalizations in which the patient left AMA accounted for 368,000 hospital stays in 2007 (1.2 percent of all hospitalizations) (table 1). In 1997, they accounted for only 264,000 discharges. The 39 percent increase in AMAs between 1997 and 2007 far exceeded the growth in all other hospital stays during the same period (13 percent) (figure 1). On average, AMA stays were about 2.5 days shorter (2.7 versus 5.1 days) and about half as expensive ($5,300 versus $10,400) than all other hospital stays.

Full report: Hospitalizations in Which Patients Leave the Hospital Against Medical Advice (AMA), 2007 (PDF | 166.92 KB)

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. (2009). Hospitalizations in which patients leave the hospital against medical advice (AMA), 2007. Statistical Brief 78. Stranges, Elizabeth; Wier,Lauren; Merrill, Chaya T.; Steiner, Claudia.