An automated best practice advisory increases both routine HIV screening and HIV cotesting with sexually transmitted...

There is increasing interest in improving routine HIV screening in emergency departments and increasing HIV cotesting rates among patients tested for sexually transmitted infections (STIs), who are considered at elevated risk of acquiring HIV.

This is a retrospective review of all ED encounters at a large, urban emergency departments with an existing HIV screening program for seven months before (November 1, 2018, to May 30, 2019) and after (June 1 to December 31, 2019) the implementation of a best practice advisory prompting universal HIV and syphilis screening.

The study included 14,767 unique encounters, with 3,982 pre-implementation encounters and 10,785 post-implementation. After implementation, HIV testing increased 242%, from 2,851 tests to 9,757, and syphilis testing increased 326%, from 2,191 tests to 9,330. The proportion of encounters for urogenital STI testing without HIV cotesting decreased by 10.3%, from 43.6% to 33.3%.

An automated electronic medical record (EMR) prompt can have a huge impact on both HIV and syphilis testing rates, as well as the rate of missed opportunities for cotesting among patients undergoing STI testing.

Hospitals should support screening with automated alerts to help meet quality metrics, improve screening rates, and reduce missed opportunities for screening in vulnerable patients.