A Quality Assurance Program for the Care of Persons Living with HIV Infection

Abstract

Many different models have been developed for health care delivery to HIV-infected persons. Nevertheless, limited experience has been accumulated in the development of evaluation activities of the system of care. We report on a quality assessment program implemented at our institution that is coordinating the delivery of care to the whole community of HIV-infected persons living in the Bergamo province. A total of 1599 patients, mostly IV drug users, were included in the study, during 1985-1992. Following three years of testing, we selected a number of demographic and clinical parameters in order to define the studied population and to allow computing of two outcome criteria and three process criteria: evaluating survival, incidence of major opportunistic infections (OIs), length of the follow-up preceding the diagnosis of AIDS, timeliness of initiation of antiretroviral therapy, and rate of hospitalization. Other criteria related to drop-out, quality of life, and patients' satisfaction have been excluded...