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Adolescent medicine subspecialists may increase quality of care at HIV clinics
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Many different providers often care for youth with HIV, although a significantly low percentage have received adolescent medicine subspecialty training, according to data presented at the 2014 Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine’s Annual Meeting.
Lana Lee, MD, an adolescent medicine fellow at Johns Hopkins University, and colleagues reviewed training and specialty profiles for 114 adult and pediatric health care providers at 12 clinic sites within the HIV research network. Providers’ training and specialties were categorized as adult, internal medicine, pediatric, combined specialty, physician assistant, pediatric internal medicine, family medicine or other. Researchers were unable to establish provider-to-patient information, so they used the total number of youth, aged 15 to 24 years, enrolled at the 12 clinic sites between 2008 and 2011 to calculate patient to provider ratios.
Study findings showed 76.3% of adult providers and 23.7% of pediatric providers cared for youth at seven adult and five pediatric HIV research clinics. About half of adult, 17.5% of pediatric, 18.4% of combined specialty and 13.6% of other providers cared for young patients with HIV between 2008 and 2011. Youth-to-provider ratios were 16:1 for adult; 47:1 for pediatric; 45:1 for combined specialty; and 6:1 for other providers. Researchers found that 41 (40%) providers had pediatric-oriented training, but only three (2.6%) providers had adolescent medicine fellowship training.
“Providers from myriad professional specialties care for HIV-infected youth; however, less than 3% of providers in this geographically diverse sample of primary and subspecialty HIV clinics have adolescent medicine subspecialty training. The lower youth-to-provider ratio for adult providers also suggests adult providers may have fewer opportunities to develop youth-oriented approaches to care. Subspecialists in adolescent medicine may play an important role in developing provider-targeted interventions that increase awareness of the unique needs of developing youth,” the researchers concluded.
For more information:
Lee L. Abstract 114. Presented at: SAHM 2014; March 23-26, 2014; Austin, Texas.
Disclosure: Lee reports no relevant financial disclosures.