Opt-Out HIV Testing: What Are We Waiting For?

An estimated 232,700 people in the U.S. are infected with HIV but do not know it. Many of them will engage with the healthcare system for reasons unrelated to their HIV status, and those visits represent opportunities for testing and awareness. To that end, the CDC has recommended since 2006 that HIV testing be performed in all healthcare settings on every patient aged 13 to 64, unless the patient explicitly declines (i.e., “opt-out” testing). However, for at least several years after that recommendation was issued, the laws in nine states (Alabama, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nebraska, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin) continued to require written informed consent. In this modeling analysis, investigators estimated …