Left without being seen

Left Without Being Seen (LWBS) is a healthcare term often used by emergency departments (ED) to designate a patient encounter that ended with the patient leaving the healthcare setting before the patient could be seen by a certified physician. Often the inclusion of this phrase in a medical record is the result of ED overcrowding (i.e. the patient could no longer wait in the ED to be seen by a physican, so they left without alerting a healthcare professional). Typically, those patients who leave an emergency department without being seen are not at an increased risk of death, and often do not require inpatient hospital admission.