Costs of Rapid HIV Screening in an Urban Emergency Department and a Nearby County Jail in the Southeastern United States.

Emergency departments and jails provide medical services to persons at risk for HIV infection and are recommended venues for HIV screening. Our main objective in this study was to analyze the cost per new HIV diagnosis associated with the HIV screening program in these two venues. The emergency department's parallel testing program was conducted at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia starting in 2008; the jail's integrated testing program began at the Fulton County (GA) Jail in 2011. The two sites, four miles apart from one another, employed the same rapid HIV test. Ascertainment that cases were new differed by site; only the jail systematically checked identities against health department HIV registries. The program in the emergency department used dedicated HIV test counselors and made 242 diagnoses over a 40-month period at a cost of $2,981 per diagnosis. The jail program used staff nurses, and found 41 new HIV cases over 10.5 months at a cost of $6,688 per new diagnosis. Differences in methods for ascertainment of new diagnoses, previously undiagnosed HIV sero-positivity, and methodologies used for assessing program costs prevent concluding that one program was more economical than the other. Nonetheless, our findings show that testing in both venues yielded many new diagnoses, with the costs within the range reported in the literature.

Injury secondary to antiretroviral agents: retrospective analysis of a regional poison center database.

INTRODUCTION: Poisoning is an increasingly important cause of injury in the United States. In 2009 poison centers received 2,479,355 exposure reports, underscoring the role of poison centers in intentional and unintentional injury prevention. Antiretroviral (ARV) agents are commonly prescribed drugs known to cause toxicity, yet the frequency of these incidents is unknown. The objectives of this study were to quantify the number of reported cases of toxicity secondary to ARV agents at a regional poison center, and to describe the circumstances and clinical manifestations of these poisonings. METHODS: We conducted a retrospective review of poison center records between December 1, 2001, and January 7, 2010. RESULTS: One hundred sixty-two exposures to ARV agents were reported to the poison center, of which 30% were intentional and 70% were unintentional. Three patients developed major toxicity and no deaths occurred. The remaining patients developed moderate and minor effects as defined by poison center guidelines. CONCLUSION: ARV drug toxicity appears to be infrequently reported to the poison center. Fatal and major toxicities are uncommon, and intentional overdoses are associated with a more serious toxicity. Educational efforts should encourage clinicians to report toxicities related to the use of ARV agents to poison centers in order to better study this problem.