Patient absconding from hospital before and after ‘Health Transformation Plan’: An interrupted time series study

Objective (s): Treatment cost and lack of insurance are the principal reasons for patients absconding or leaving without permission from a hospital. Here we aimed to investigate the effect of the Health Transformation Plan (HTP) on patients absconding from a large general hospital in Tehran, Iran. Methods: In this descriptive study, we considered March 2011 to April 2014 as the period before and June 2014 to March 2017 as the period after the introduction of the HTP. The data of 701 absconded patients were collected. For data analysis, the Mann-Whitney test and Interrupted Time Series model were used in STATA.12 software. Results: The proportion of absconding patients immediately has decreased significantly since the implementation of the HTP (P = 0.002, β = 0.342). However, during the 3-year period after the implementation of the HTP, the patient absconding rate has increased monthly by 0.12% (p = 0.019). Investigating the difference in the patient absconding rate before and after the HTP, we found that the proportion of patients absconding has significantly increased since the HTP implementation (0.011 slope; p = 0.019). Conclusion: Immediately after the implementation of the HTP, the proportion of patients absconding from hospital dropped significantly. This suggests that the HTP has been effective at reducing the patient absconding rate by creating insurance coverage and reducing costs. However, the reasons for a reversal of this trend during the third year of the HTP should be further investigated.