Emergency room patients increasingly leave California hospitals against medical advice, and experts say crowded ERs are likely to blame.
About 352,000 California ER visits in 2017 ended when patients left after seeing a doctor but before their medical care was complete. That’s up by 57%, or 128,000 incidents, from 2012, according to data from the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development.
Another 322,000 would-be patients left the emergency room without seeing a doctor, up from 315,000 such episodes in 2012.
