HEALTH CARE RESOURCE UTILIZATION AND COSTS IN HIV-POSITIVE VERSUS HIV-NEGATIVE PATIENTS

OBJECTIVES: The study objective was to evaluate the impact of HIV on health care resource utilization and costs, using the Régie de l'Assurance Maladie du Québec (RAMQ) public drug plan database. METHODS: Patients who had received anti-retroviral treatment (ART) for at least six months from January 2006 to June 2012 were selected. HIV-negative individuals from a random sample were matched 3:1 for age, sex and time of follow-up and compared to HIV-positive patients. Cohort entry was defined for the HIV-positive patients as the date of the first script of ART and for the matched control group of HIV-negative individuals as the date of the first any diagnosis or any prescription recorded in the database. Cases and controls were compared with independent t-test for continuous variables and with chi-square test for categorical variables. RESULTS: For the analysis of 3,905 HIV-positive patients and the matched control group of 11,715 HIV-negative individuals, the mean age was 45.3 years (SD=11.9) with 77.3% being male. The HIV-positive patients had a higher Charlson comorbidity score (3.3 SD=3.3 vs. 0.3 SD=0.8, p