Background and Aims: Patient absconding is a major health issue with economic, social, and health costs and consequences. The present study aimed to investigate the absconding rate from a emergency department and its financial burden in a public hospital in Tehran, IRAN. Materials and Methods: This retrospective and descriptive study was carried out in the emergency department of a large public and teaching hospital in Tehran. Data were collected using the absconded patient records from 23 September 2013 to 22 September 2014. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics. Concerns about medical ethics, including patient’s confidentiality and hospital name were observed at all stages of study. Results: The results of this study indicate that 774 patients had left the hospital without permission or a notice to staff, so the absconding rate in this study was about 2.4 percent. Young, male, married and uninsured patients were more absconded. Average billing per absconded patient was 1,449,738 Iranian Rials (IRR). The hospital was consequently incurred financial losses amounted to 1,122,097,212 IRR as a result of patient absconding. Conclusion: In order to preventing and reducing the abscond rate, the following strategies are recommended: the identification of high-risk patients for further care, regular monitoring of emergency departments, good communication and interaction with the patient and his family, introducing the discharge against medical advice (DAMA) policy to patients, accurate recording of patient information to reduce the risk of abscond or access to him/her after the absconding.

Background and Aims: Site selection and management of a landfill site is one of the main pillars of sustainable development. Selection of an appropriate site for the burial of rural wastes is of utmost importance in rural areas. At present there is no coherent management in the field of rural wastes. Selecting the right place for landfilling requires considering several complex factors and thus the need for use of spatial information technologies and their incorporation to other managing and planning issues are raised. Materials and Methods: In this study, nine important affecting parameters in locating the waste burial site including the slope, aspect, elevation, distance to the rural points, distance to the channels, distance to the roads, distance to the faults, erosion, and land use were considered to assess the appropriate site for burial of the rural wastes of the central part of Ejroud city. The identified parameters were compared by incorporating the Analytic Hierarchy Analysis (AHP) method in a pairwise manner and the corresponding weight of each factor, which indicates the effect of that factor, was calculated utilizing the Expert Choice software. All stages of this research were conducted ethically. Results: Through the incorporation of weight layers obtained in the ArcGIS environment, the final locating map for burial of the rural wastes in the study area was prepared and categorized into 5 classes (completely inappropriate, inappropriate, intermediate, appropriate and completely appropriate). Conclusion: The results showed that the appropriate and completely appropriate zones with 251.1 and 158.1 square kilometers had respectively the highest prefer ability for burial of the wastes in this categorization. Totally, about 41.8% of the total area of the town, was prioritized for the waste burial plans.

Background and Aims: Patient absconding is a major health issue with economic, social, and health costs and consequences. The present study aimed to investigate the absconding rate from a emergency department and its financial burden in a public hospital in Tehran, IRAN. Materials and Methods: This retrospective and descriptive study was carried out in the emergency department of a large public and teaching hospital in Tehran. Data were collected using the absconded patient records from 23 September 2013 to 22 September 2014. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics. Concerns about medical ethics, including patient’s confidentiality and hospital name were observed at all stages of study. Results: The results of this study indicate that 774 patients had left the hospital without permission or a notice to staff, so the absconding rate in this study was about 2.4 percent. Young, male, married and uninsured patients were more absconded. Average billing per absconded patient was 1,449,738 Iranian Rials (IRR). The hospital was consequently incurred financial losses amounted to 1,122,097,212 IRR as a result of patient absconding. Conclusion: In order to preventing and reducing the abscond rate, the following strategies are recommended: the identification of high-risk patients for further care, regular monitoring of emergency departments, good communication and interaction with the patient and his family, introducing the discharge against medical advice (DAMA) policy to patients, accurate recording of patient information to reduce the risk of abscond or access to him/her after the absconding.