Rates of recommended baseline testing for patients initiating HIV care are ‘suboptimal’
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts
The rates at which patients initiating HIV care receive recommended tests are “suboptimal,” but they were higher among those who initiated care at a Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program-funded facility, researchers found.
“In 2020, the HIV Medicine Association of the Infectious Diseases Society of America updated its primary care guidance for people with HIV. The recommendations included baseline laboratory testing as part of the initial evaluation of people with HIV,” John Weiser, MD, MPH, an epidemiologist in the CDC’s Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention, told Healio. “Examples of baseline laboratory testing include HIV monitoring tests and other tests to identify and prevent comorbidities or complications.”
Source: Adobe Stock.
Weiser and colleagues used 2015-2019 data from the Medical Monitoring Project — a CDC survey designed to produce nationally representative estimates of behavioral and clinical characteristics of adults with diagnosed HIV in the United States — to estimate the prevalence of recommended testing between 3 months before and up to 6 months after patients’ first HIV provider visit. The analysis included 725 participants who received an HIV diagnosis within the past 2 years.
They found that within 6 months of care initiation, HIV monitoring tests were performed for 91.3% (95% CI, 88.7-93.8) of patients. However, only about a quarter of patients had documentation of tests for syphilis and viral hepatitis coinfection (27.5%; 95% CI, 22.5-32.4), less than two-thirds had documentation of site-based sexually transmitted infection tests (59.7%; 95% CI, 55.4-63.9), and only half had all recommended blood chemistry and hematology testing done (50.8%; 95% CI, 45.8-55.8).
According to the study, patients who were young, gay or bisexual were more likely to receive site-based STI tests, and patients receiving care at Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program (RWHAP)-funded facilities were more likely than patients at non-RWHAP-funded facilities to receive all test combinations.
“The receipt of recommended baseline tests among patients initiating HIV care was suboptimal,” Weiser said. “Embedding clinical decision support in HIV provider workflow could increase the recommended baseline testing.”
Collapse
Read more about
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts