Quality Care for People with HIV/AIDS: patients' perspectives

To explore patient preferences to aid in the development of quality measures to assess quality of health care for people living with human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immunodeficiency disease (HIV/AIDS).

This study involved three 2-hour focus groups with 29 people living with HIV/AIDS in Portland, Oregon, and San Francisco, California. Eighteen quality of care indicators for HIV/AIDS health care were presented to each group and quantitative rankings were obtained. Aggregated weightings were used to rank and prioritize the quality measures for further exploration.

Participants identified 38 themes relevant to high-quality care for HIV/AIDS. Patients ranked the following candidate measures most important: effective relationship with provider, prevention of opportunistic infections, involvement in care and treatment decisions, being offered antiretroviral treatment, and access to health care services. We observed attitudinal differences among focus group participants that corresponded to gender and race/ethnicity.

Participants favored quality information that rated the experience of care and outcome measures including indicators of access to services, standard treatments, and competence of the providers. Patient perspectives can inform the development of quality measures that are meaningful to consumers and can assist in the design of services that meet patients' demographic and socioeconomic needs.