HIV testing in a high prevalence urban area in the US: Identifying missed opportunities two ways

Routine opt-out HIV testing in healthcare settings is often not implemented to its fullest extent. We assessed factors contributing to missed HIV testing opportunities at an academic medical center in Chicago, Illinois, with a routine HIV screening program.

Retrospective analysis of HIV testing in clinical encounters was performed using multivariate regession models. Missed opportunities were defined as 1) an encounter during which an HIV test was not conducted on a patient later diagnosed with HIV, or 2) an encounter in which a bacterial STI test was performed without HIV testing.

Of 122 people newly diagnosed with HIV from 2011-2018, 98 patients had 1215 prior encounters, of which 82.8% were missed opportunities. Female gender, persons not known to be men who have sex with men, and encounter location other than inpatient had higher odds of a missed opportunity. Nearly half (48.4%) of 104,678 bacterial STI testing encounters were missed opportunities. Female gender, older age, lack of syphilis testing, and location outside the emergency department had higher odds of a missed opportunity.

We found a high number of missed HIV testing opportunities, which could be reduced by strengthening routine screening and increasing targeted testing concurrent with STI screening.