California HIV Tracking System May Be Scrapped

[pinto]

Interesting article covering the long running debate about names reporting for HIV here in California. CA has had a two tiered reporting system for HIV disease. AIDS diagnoses have always been a reportable illness. For the last three years, HIV infection has been reported to State Health and Human Services and then on to the CDC using a coded indentifier.

Previously HIV infection was not reported, partly due to the assumption of "progression" to an AIDS dx and a report at that point. Med interventions have obviously changed that picture.
Looks like this is coming close to a resolution.

If you're interested in the politics of healthcare, there's enough here to give you a picture of the diverse influences effecting the names reporting issue in CA. Worth a read. (Reg. Req'd.)

By Charles Ornstein
Times Staff Writer

July 25, 2005

It was heralded as a way for California to closely track the spread of HIV without compromising patient privacy or civil rights. Rather than reporting infected patients by name, public health agencies would identify them by codes.

Despite its lofty intentions, however, California's 3-year-old reporting system for the human immunodeficiency virus has become a bureaucratic morass.

<snip>

Countless cases are believed to be lost in the system. As a result, health authorities throughout the state say they cannot effectively monitor the epidemic or direct scarce dollars where they are most needed.

<snip>

Michael Montgomery, chief of the state Office of AIDS, strongly backed the code system at first, but since has come to believe that a names-reporting system would work better.

"It's just a question of when we do it," Montgomery said about the switch.

<more here, reg req.>

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/california/la-me-hiv25jul25,1,5133973.story?coll=la-headlines-pe-california

[Trillo]

1. I have to wonder if the 'unstated motive' for rising health care costs

is to eliminate medical privacy entirely.

I know its a gross oversimplification, but still I wonder....

[pinto]

2. In a lot of ways the new HIPPA guidelines increased med record security.

Don't know if that's what you're referring to, though.?

[Moderator]

3. kick