Shortage of HIV-Experienced Clinicians in the Southern U.S.

The southern U.S. is the region with the highest burden of HIV in the U.S., so understanding the current situation and planning for the future workforce needed to provide care are important to achieve national goals for HIV control. For this study, investigators evaluated the region's HIV clinician capacity using Medicaid claims for 13 southern states and the District of Columbia (2009−2011), county-level rurality data (2013), and diagnosed HIV cases (2014). For the analysis, the authors assumed that clinicians accepting Medicaid closely reflected the region's HIV workforce, and HIV-experienced clinicians were defined as caring for ≥10 Medicaid enrollees living with HIV.

The investigators identified 5012 clinicians providing routine HIV care…