Dr. Robert Redfield believes an HIV test should be as routine as any other test when a patient is admitted for care.
“One of the most important tools we have to confront an infectious disease is knowledge of infection,” said Redfield, the director of clinical care and research at the Institute of Human Virology, part of the University of Maryland School of Medicine.
For years, patients have had to ask for an HIV test, rather than opt out of one, meaning fewer people are getting testing, and fewer people know if they are infected.
“If you don’t know you have it, you can’t be treated, and you can spread it,” said Dr. William Blattner, IHV’s director of epidemiology and prevention division.
This concept of early diagnosis is beginning to catch on, and being an “epicenter” for the disease, Maryland has an opportunity to encourage it, Redfield said. “There is an opportunity for the medical community to strengthen the leadership.”
The catch has been that the law has required patients to fill out separate consent forms and undergo lengthy counseling when getting a test. But that’s changing, said Meena Abraham, director of public health and physician quality programs at MedChi, the Maryland State Medical Society, which advocates for physicians.
Last year, state lawmakers passed a law removing some of the barriers for physicians to begin routine HIV testing, such as separate consent forms, Abraham said.
“If you had a separate written form of consent and counseling, then you are making it very burdensome on the physician to test people,” she said.
Now, the organization is working to educate doctors on the change and the level of information and support they need to provide patients, she said.
It’s going to take a while to achieve routine testing, Abraham said, but the law change was “huge progress.”
