Objective-Among HIV infected individuals we examined whether having a co-occurring serious mental illness (SMI) and injection drug use (IDU) impacts: (1) receipt of HAART and (2) utilization of inpatient HIV services, compared to those who have SMI only, IDU only, or neither.Methods-Demographic, clinical, and resource utilization data were collected from medical records of 5,119 patients in HIV primary care at 4 U.S. HIV care sites in different geographic regions with on-site mental health services in 2001. We analyzed receipt of HAART using multivariate logistic regression and number of medical hospital admissions using multivariate logistic and Poisson regression analyses, which controlled for demographic factors, receipt of HAART, CD4 count and HIV-1 RNA. Conclusions-HIV-infected individuals with co-occurring SMI and IDU are significantly more likely to utilize HIV-related medical inpatient services than individuals with no or only one comorbidity. Individuals with both SMI and IDU did not differ from those with IDU only in receipt of HAART. Inpatient hospitalizations are expensive, and efforts should be targeted towards these populations to reduce potentially avoidable inpatient care.
Results-