Academy Exchange

Hi!  I'm reaching out to this amazing community as I know you are a wealth of knowledge and resources.  My background is as a FNP primary care provider as well as AAHIVS for the past ~10 years, however I now work for a virtual urgent care.  We do order a fair amount of HIV testing, however it has recently come to light that, other than me, nobody has experience in providing HIV+ test results to patients, and folks feel a bit uncomfortable with doing so, particularly since there is no policy/procedure in place to provide a workflow for individuals to follow.  We are fortunate in that we do have multiple sites we can refer to locally for HIV care, so linkage to care shouldn't be challenging.  I'm just wondering if anyone here currently works for a virtual practice and if so what your current workflow is for handling HIV+ results?  I certainly have some ideas, but of course if there is already a program successfully doing this, I'd be remiss to not learn from it!  Thank you for taking the time to read this and respond! 

Do you have policies in place for telling people they have diabetes, cancer, or heart disease, each of which has far greater medical impact than an HIV diagnosis? You probably don't, but "HIV exceptionalism" still exists, and this is an example. The CDC tried to address this a long time ago by getting rid of recommendations for written informed consent for HIV testing and pre- and post-test counselling, which only got in the way of getting people diagnosed.

Every day, these providers do things that are far more complicated than talking about HIV to their patients. I'm sure they could learn how to deliver a diagnosis with a very short lecture or on-line video. 

When you get them past this hurdle, the next step is to consider getting those patients started on ART while they wait for their referral.  "Rapid start" is now the standard of care.

(I'm truly not trying to be sarcastic here, and I really appreciate the fact that you're trying to do the right thing at your center.)

Hi!  I'm reaching out to this amazing community as I know you are a wealth of knowledge and resources.  My background is as a FNP primary care provider as well as AAHIVS for the past ~10 years, however I now work for a virtual urgent care.  We do order a fair amount of HIV testing, however it has recently come to light that, other than me, nobody has experience in providing HIV+ test results to patients, and folks feel a bit uncomfortable with doing so, particularly since there is no policy/procedure in place to provide a workflow for individuals to follow.  We are fortunate in that we do have multiple sites we can refer to locally for HIV care, so linkage to care shouldn't be challenging.  I'm just wondering if anyone here currently works for a virtual practice and if so what your current workflow is for handling HIV+ results?  I certainly have some ideas, but of course if there is already a program successfully doing this, I'd be remiss to not learn from it!  Thank you for taking the time to read this and respond!