A feasibility study for 3 strategies promoting HIV testing in primary health care in Madrid, Spain (ESTVIH project)

Late diagnosis of HIV infection is a public health problem. Framed by the international guidelines for improving HIV testing, in 2014, the Spanish Ministry of Health published a guide of recommendations to promote early diagnosis of HIV in health care settings. In the Community of Madrid, in order to implement these recommendations, we defined 3 new HIV testing strategies in primary health care. The objectives of this study were to know the interest of professionals and the acceptability for patients towards these strategies.

We performed a quasi-experimental study to assess the feasibility of the implementation of new strategies (indicator condition, risk based, and universal offer) to promote early detection of HIV infection in the framework of the ESTVIH project. The centres participating in this project were randomly chosen among centres located in the health areas with the highest incidence of HIV infection. The feasibility was assessed in 6 centres. We considered outcomes by strategy in relation to the participation of professionals (family physician and nursing) and patients.

Overall, 56.9% of eligible professionals agreed to take part in the study; however, the percentage of professionals who recruited patients was 25.9%. This percentage was higher in the indicator condition strategy (47.2%, versus 18.5% in the universal offer and 14.3% in the risk-based strategy, P-value < 0.05). The test uptake percentage was greater than 80%, and there were no statistically significant differences between strategies.

Different strategies promoting HIV testing in primary care had different acceptability among professionals and similar among patients. At the end of the ESTVIH project, these results will be complemented with others related to the contribution of each strategy to improving the early diagnosis of HIV infection.