This retrospective study will examine trends in the financing of HIV-related inpatient care over a ten year period. The purpose of the study is to determine how the distribution of payers for HIV-related hospitalizations has changed over time, to consider how these changes can be accounted for, to compare the mix of payers that finance HIV-related care with the financing of care for other diseases, and to consider some implications for access to care. This investigation builds upon and extends an earlier study which used hospital discharge data from New York City, San Francisco, and Los Angeles to analyze trends in the financing of AIDS; the results of that study were published by Green and Arno in the Journal of the American Medical Association as """"""""The 'Medicaidization' of AIDS: Trends in the Financing of HIV-Related Medical Care."""""""" The prior study covered three cities and five years (1983-1987); the proposed study covers 33 cities and the nonurban areas of six states and extends the time period to ten years (1983-1992). The proposed study, in addition to expanding the investigation, also considers new hypotheses including a comparison of the financing of AIDS with several other medical conditions, and the relationship of payer to stage of illness.
