Elopement: evidence-based mitigation and management.

Elopement represents a serious threat to patient safety and requires a system-wide, organized response. This article describes the development and implementation of an organizational elopement management plan featuring an elopement risk evaluation and elopement response algorithm. After implementation, the number of elopements occurring over a six-month period decreased from 34 to 12 events and the average duration of each event decreased from 118 minutes to 24 minutes.