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A Comparison Study of Methods for Measuring Retention in HIV Medical Care

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Abstract

The purpose of this study was to compare multiple measures of retention in HIV medical care by determining their ability to predict viral suppression. Patients who sought care between 2003 and 2011 were eligible. Visit constancy, gaps-in-care, and HRSA measure were the measures compared. Multiple logistic regressions and area under the curve statistics were employed to determine which measure most accurately discerned between patients with or without viral suppression. There were 850 patients included in the study. The mean follow-up time among the cohort was 5.6 years and less than half were consistently retained in care. All three measures had similar area under the curves, but only visit constancy and gaps in care were significantly associated with viral suppression. Retention in care should be defined consistently across studies and interventions should be set in place to increase the number of optimal retainers.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Jana Collins for providing insight and technical assistance on the collection of data used for the study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, College of Public Health, The University of Kentucky, 121 N. Martin Luther King #303, Lexington, KY, 40507, USA

    Timothy N. Crawford & Wayne T. Sanderson

  2. College of Medicine, The University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, USA

    Alice Thornton

Authors
  1. Timothy N. Crawford
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  2. Wayne T. Sanderson
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  3. Alice Thornton
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Correspondence to Timothy N. Crawford.

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Crawford, T.N., Sanderson, W.T. & Thornton, A. A Comparison Study of Methods for Measuring Retention in HIV Medical Care. AIDS Behav 17, 3145–3151 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10461-013-0559-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10461-013-0559-0

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