Transitional Care Coordination For Incarcerated People With HIV

Segment Description: Pamela Gorman, RN, ACRN, administrative director of the Cooper Early Intervention Program Expanded Care Clinic in Camden, New Jersey, describes a transitional care coordination program for incarcerated individuals with HIV returning to the community primary care setting.

Interview Transcript (modified slightly for readability):

Gorman: Cooper University Healthcare was selected as an interventional site for evidence-based interventions. And the model that we were selected to participate in as a demonstration site was the transitional care coordination from jail to community primary care.

And the purpose of this was to allow patients the opportunity to connect with a care coordinator while they were incarcerated, and immediately identify what their needs were so that as soon as they were released from jail, you'll be able to get them access to medical care services.

In order for this to work successfully you have to work collaboratively with the jail and the individuals that are responsible for running the jail such as the warden or the medical care provider. Some jails contract, and in the particular jail that we were working at, which is Camden County Correctional Facility, they contracted with an agency called Center for Family Services and they provided the medical care services on site at the jail.

This project was in collaboration with Boston University and AIDS United and these are the agencies that were funded by the Health Resources and Services Administration to do a special projects of national significance which is known as SPINS for short, and evaluate this evidence based intervention and the effectiveness on recruiting patients or individuals that are known to be HIV positive or newly diagnosed as HIV positive and identify them while they're incarcerated and hopefully improve their connection to medical care when they get released.