Abstract
BACKGROUND: Distance from patient's home to the hospital has been proposed as one of the limiting factors for patient's retention in care. METHODS: Retrospective cohort study of HIV+ patients 18 years or older who had their first clinical visit between 2011 and 2013 at a reference center in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Patients were considered to be retained in care if they had>=1 clinical visit, laboratory markers (VL and/or CD4 count) and/or ARVs pick-up during the year after their first clinical visit. Each patient address's latitude-longitude was obtained using Google Maps(®) web service. Home-hospital distance and travel time were obtained with Google Maps Distance Matrix API(®) service. RESULTS: Of 1020 patients who started follow-up, 15 died and 158 were transferred to another site. Of the remaining, 816 (96.3%) had identifiable address in their electronic medical record. Median age at the time of the first visit was 33 (IQR 27-41) years, 654 (77.9%) patients were male. Median home-hospital distance was 10.3 (IQR 4.4-34.7) km and median travel time was 58.5 (IQR 35-102.5) minutes. 730 patients (89.5%; CI 87.1-91.5%) remained in follow-up after 1 year of their first visit. We didńt find association between travel time and home-hospital distance with retention in this population. CONCLUSIONS: In our study, distance between home and the care center was not associated with lower retention one year after first visit in adult HIV patients attending a public hospital.