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Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1994. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Voluntary HIV Counseling and Testing of Hospital In-Patients to Protect Health Care Workers Is Not Cost-Effective, UCSF Study Finds
Business Wire (12/20/94)
A new cost-effectiveness study done by the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF) found that there is no justification for voluntary HIV testing of hospital in- patients to prevent HIV-infection of health care workers. The researchers found that screening in-patients to detect infection may be cost effective when a significant number of the patients are HIV-infected. There are, however, ethical and policy concerns that must be adequately addressed before any large-scale counseling and testing program can be supported. The study was prompted by recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 1993 to consider using voluntary HIV testing and counseling programs for in- patients between the ages of 15 and 54 in certain acute care hospitals in the United States. The researchers determined that if all in-patients were offered HIV counseling and testing, only 3.6 health care worker HIV infections would be prevented each year. The annual program cost would be $2.7 billion, or $753 million per infection averted. "In our view, this is not sufficiently cost-effective to justify testing to protect health care workers from HIV infection," said lead author Peter Lurie, of the UCSF Center for AIDS Prevention Studies.
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Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1994. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
