A mobile station typically determines whether to drop a communication link and/or a base transceiver station (BTS) based on a performance of an associated forward link. In order to avoid dropping a communication link that has a weak forward link but a strong reverse link, a communication system is provided that determines whether the reverse link is still good before determining to drop the communication link. In one embodiment, the communication system determines whether reverse link is still good based on a quality metric associated with the reverse link and quality metric(s) associated with one or more other reverse links that are in a soft-handoff mode with reverse link. In another embodiment, the communication system determines whether reverse link is still good by comparing a quality metric associated with the reverse link to a threshold.