Effective HIV Case Identification Through Routine HIV Screening at Urgent Care Centers in Massachusetts

Abstract
Think HIV offered HIV counseling, testing, and referral to patients at 4 Massachusetts urgent care centers from January to September 2002. We compared the positive diagnosis yield of Think HIV with that of state-funded HIV counseling, testing, and referral sites. Think HIV found an HIV prevalence of 2.0% compared with 1.9% identified by self-referral testing. Urgent care center–based routine HIV counseling, testing, and referral programs are feasible, can have high positive diagnosis yields, and should be the standard of care in high HIV prevalence areas.