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Background Access to primary care is an important determinant of health, and data are sparse on primary care utilization for people who experience imprisonment. We aimed to describe primary care utilization for persons released from prison, and to compare utilization with the general population. Methods We linked correctional data for all persons released from provincial prison in Ontario, Canada in 2010 with health administrative data. We matched each person by age and sex with four general population controls. We compared primary care utilization rates using generalized estimating equations. We adjusted rate ratios for aggregated diagnosis groups, to explore this association independent of comorbidity. We examined the proportion of people using primary care using chi squared tests and time to first primary care visit post-release using the Kaplan-Meier method. Results Compared to the general population controls, the prison release group had significantly increased relative rates of primary care utilization: at 6.1 (95% CI 5.9-6.2) in prison, 3.7 (95% CI 3.6-3.8) in the week post-release and between 2.4 and 2.6 in the two years after prison release. All rate ratios remained significantly increased after adjusting for comorbidity. In the month after release, however, 66.3% of women and 75.5% of men did not access primary care. Conclusions Primary care utilization is high in prison and post-release for people who experience imprisonment in Ontario, Canada. Increased use is only partly explained by comorbidity. The majority of people do not access primary care in the month after prison release. Future research should identify reasons for increased use and interventions to improve care access for persons who are not accessing care post-release. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1186/s12913-018-3660-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

OBJECTIVES: To describe the prevalence of drug use in males in a provincial detention centre during the year before incarceration and to examine the association between socio-demographic and behavioural factors and drug use. METHODS: In 2009, 500 adult males completed a survey after admission to a provincial detention centre in Ontario. Past-year prevalence rates were calculated for the use of opioids, cocaine, crack and methamphetamine, and by route of administration. Bivariate logistic regression was used to examine associations between drug use and socio-demographic and behavioural factors. RESULTS: More than 56% of participants reported use of opioids, cocaine, crack or methamphetamine in the previous year. Risk factors for blood-borne and sexually transmitted infections were commonly reported for the previous year: 12.2% had injected drugs, 78.0% had had unprotected sex, and 48.0% had had more than one sexual partner. In unadjusted analyses, participants who were older than 24 years were more likely to have used any drugs and to have injected drugs in the previous year. CONCLUSIONS: This study provides the first Canadian data in the past decade on drug use by recently incarcerated adults. We found that drug use and behaviours that increase the risk of transmission of sexually transmitted and blood-borne infections remain very common in this population. Incarceration provides an opportunity to provide services and links to programs for people who use drugs, which could decrease drug-related harms to individuals and society.

To estimate the prevalence of HIV infection in persons released from Ontario prisons in 2010 using administrative health data, and to compare this observed prevalence with the expected prevalence based on the most recently available biological sampling data.We linked identifying data for all adults released from Ontario provincial prisons in 2010 with administrative health data, and applied a validated algorithm to determine the observed HIV prevalence. We calculated the expected HIV prevalence using 2003-2004 age stratum-specific data from a published study using salivary sampling. We calculated an indirect standardized prevalence ratio of the observed to expected prevalence and 95% confidence intervals. Finally, we conducted sensitivity analyses to adjust for the sensitivity of the algorithm to identify persons with HIV and for undiagnosed HIV infection.Of 52,313 persons released from Ontario prisons in 2010, we identified 363 persons with HIV, for an observed prevalence of 0.69%. The expected prevalence was 2.38%. Standardized for age, we found a prevalence ratio of 0.29 (95% CI, 0.17-0.77). Sensitivity analyses adjusting for the algorithm's sensitivity and further adjusting for undiagnosed HIV infection produced standardized prevalence ratios of 0.30 and 0.38, respectively.Our findings suggest that a high proportion of persons with HIV recently released from provincial prisons either do not know they have HIV infection or do know about their infection but are not engaged in care. Interventions are required to screen people for HIV in prison and to link persons with care following release.