Development of a Locator Tool and Protocol to Support People Living With HIV in Baltimore: A Quality Improvement Project

Retaining people with HIV (PWH) in medical care is crucial to ending HIV as an epidemic. Many PWH in Baltimore also experience high rates of substance use, mental health disorders, and homelessness, making it difficult to locate and engage them in care. In our hospital-to-community transitional care program for PWH, 50% of clients were lost to follow-up. To increase the percentage of engaged patients, we developed a locator tool and protocol detailing patient's social and personal information, to be used when clients could not otherwise be located. We obtained completed locator tools on 85% of our 20-client sample, and 76% of these were active at 60 days. Of these, 53% were active at 90 days. The locator tool and protocol were acceptable and feasible in locating and retaining hard-to-reach clients. Widespread, consistent use of the locator tool and protocol may be an effective intervention toward ending the HIV epidemic.