Discharge planning and continuity of health care: findings from the San Francisco County Jail

Abstract

Continuity of health care among the formerly incarcerated is an emerging public health challenge. We used data from the San Francisco County Jail to determine whether discharge planning improves access to care on release. Inmates who were HIV positive and received discharge planning were 6 times more likely to have a regular source of care in the community compared with inmates with other chronic medical conditions, and they were as likely to have a regular source of care compared with the general San Francisco population.

FIGURE 1

Access to community care of San Francisco County Jail inmates, by chronic disease status, compared with the general population by selected sociodemographic characteristics: ACCESS Study, San Francisco, Calif, 2005 Note. Access to care of the general San Francisco population is represented by the dashed black line, which is assigned a value of 1.0 for comparisons with inmates' access to care. Standardized morbidity ratios for sociodemographic groups (older than 50 years, male, Black, insured, and uninsured) compare jail inmates' access by chronic disease status with that of the general San Francisco population, with interpretations similar to those for odds ratios.