Telemedicine and visit completion among people with HIV during the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic compared with prepandemic

We describe the impact of telemedicine on access to care for people with HIV (PWH) by comparing the proportion of PWH engaged in care prior to and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Design and methods: We conducted an observational analysis of patients enrolled in the Johns Hopkins HIV Clinical Cohort, a single-center cohort of patients at an urban HIV subspecialty clinic affiliated with an academic center. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the clinic transitioned from in-person to mostly telemedicine visits. We compared patients receiving care in two time periods. The prepandemic period included 2010 people with at least one visit scheduled between 1 September 2019 and 15 March 2020. The pandemic period included 1929 people with at least one visit scheduled between 16 March 2020 and 30 September 2020. We determined the proportion of patients completing at least one of their scheduled visits during each period. Results: Visit completion increased significantly from 88% prepandemic to 91% during the pandemic (P = 0.008). Visit completion improved significantly for patients age 20–39 (82 to 92%, P 
Source: AIDS - Category: Infectious Diseases Tags: CLINICAL SCIENCE Source Type: research