Houston Emergency Rooms Screening Every Adult for HIV

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A pilot program in several Houston emergency rooms has found founds that approximately 1/100 people who are treated in the hospital are infected with HIV.

"Some of the people we have found to be HIV-positive, we absolutely know if that institution had been screening earlier that they would have been identified earlier," said Marlene McNeese-Ward, who leads the city health department's HIV prevention efforts.

Houston is one of several cities with high HIV rates to receive grants from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to start so-called opt-out testing programs. In the local project, it means that all patients ages 18 to 64 receive HIV tests unless they're among the 1 percent who decline. (Some Houston sites test only those having blood work done.)

Routine testing eliminates prejudices from of the screening process, said Dr. Michael Horberg, a San Francisco HIV specialist and a board member of the HIV Medicine Association.

"When it's stated as a part of overall testing, there are very few people who effectively opt out," said Horberg, who directs HIV/AIDS programs for the Kaiser Permanente health system. Anything that renders HIV testing routine "is addressing a real need and, in many respects, puts Houston at the forefront" of testing in the U.S., he said.

The CDC is planning on releasing another $142 million for HIV testing initiatives in the next three years. Rather than providing opt-out hospital based testing, the new initiatives will target select demographics that are most heavily impacted by the virus.