Machine learning effectively predicts discharge against medical advice

A study evaluated machine learning algorithms to predict discharge against medical advice for 48,394 injured inpatients over five years. Among these individuals, 8.8% opted for discharge against medical advice. The light gradient boosting machine combined with edited nearest neighbors outperformed traditional logistic regression, achieving areas under the curve of 0.820 and 0.837 in internal and temporal validations, respectively. Key predictors included surgical grade, highlighting the model’s potential to improve patient management strategies.