Main Page | See live article | Alphabetical index Separation from a healthcare facility occurs anytime a patient (or resident) leaves because of death, discharge, sign-out against medical advice or transfer. The number of separations is the most commonly used measure of the utilization of hospital services. Separations, rather than admissions, are used because hospital abstracts for inpatient care are based on information gathered at the time of discharge. This article is from Wikipedia. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.