Rita K. Kuwahara, MD, MIH
Early detection of HIV, sexually transmitted diseases, viral hepatitis, and tuberculosis is not only important for improving individual clinical outcomes and reducing the risk of complications associated with end-stage disease, but also for these infections. It is also key to preventing the further spread of HIV to local communities.
With the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a significant reduction in routine screening. Increasing these screenings is essential to ensure that everyone eligible for screening under current guidelines has the tests recommended as a matter of health equity.
For busy clinicians, automated electronic medical record prompts, standing orders, and other streamlined processes to facilitate recommended screening are central to increasing recommended screening rates and reducing screening rates. The AMA initiative to develop a toolkit to improve
In addition, as community health centers serve a diverse population and play a central role in providing preventive health services such as routine screening and vaccination, it is important that AMAs work with specific community health centers. and is piloting a newly developed toolkit to improve recommended screening.
With this toolkit and other strategies for increasing routine screening implemented, it is now possible to avoid adopting a siled approach and invest in building an infrastructure that can adapt to the evolving public health landscape. It is important.
For example, developing a simple approach to enable clinicians to integrate recommended screenings for HIV, sexually transmitted infections, viral hepatitis, and tuberculosis into routine clinical practice, while developing new outbreaks and emerging infectious diseases. Systems should be put in place to scale up infectious disease screening if HIV needs to be addressed. In the future, we can quickly get ahead of diseases like COVID-19 and monkeypox.
From the patient’s perspective, early detection of infection enables patients to receive treatment for diagnosed infections as soon as possible, and if chronic infections require regular monitoring, cures are available or Receive appropriate links to maintenance treatment and care. From a public health perspective, rapid diagnosis of infectious diseases is critical to identify, track, and contain potential infectious disease outbreaks in communities.
Furthermore, it is important to ensure equitable access to preventive services, and to reduce racial and ethnic health disparities, culturally appropriate approaches are used to make recommendations in the patient’s preferred language. Efforts should be made to communicate information about the screenings that will be given.
Most importantly, if a vaccine exists to prevent the disease being screened for, it will ensure that patients who do not have the disease but are not immune to it receive the recommended vaccine to prevent infection. We need to put in place a system that allows us to receive it.
As an example, hepatitis B vaccine is now universally recommended for adults aged 19 to 59 and for adults aged 60 and over with risk factors, so if you test negative for HBV and may be , the person is vaccinated against HBV to prevent future infections.
Finally, from a policy perspective, it is important that everyone has access to affordable preventive health care, including recommended screenings and vaccines, as strategies are being developed to improve routine screening. . Patients with Affordable Care Act health insurance plans should continue to have access to recommended preventive services without sharing the patient’s costs. Kelly vs Becerra, Latest Lawsuits Threatening ACA.
In addition, when testing for infectious diseases such as HIV, HBV and hepatitis C, access to affordable HCV treatment and maintenance drugs and necessary follow-up monitoring for HIV should patients test positive. is important. HBV.
Additionally, when updating screening recommendations, as the CDC is currently doing for HBV screening, if the CDC’s updated recommendations do not align with the current U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommendations, the ACA Health Patients on insurance plans are not eligible. Receive CDC-recommended screening at no cost to the patient unless the USPSTF subsequently updates its recommendations.
As a result, the USPSTF has prioritized a reassessment of recently updated guidelines by the CDC to allow for widespread implementation of the recommendations in clinical practice and to prevent patients from unexpectedly paying high costs for screenings not covered by insurance. It is important to avoid having to pay expensive medical bills.
Nationwide, as health disparities widened during the COVID-19 pandemic and there was an initial decline in routine screening, strategies and toolkits such as those developed by the AMA should be implemented to promote recommended routine screening and screening. We need to provide clinicians with the tools to easily integrate vaccines. Incorporate into daily clinical practice to reduce inequities and improve health outcomes for patients and communities.
Rita K. Kuwahara, MD, MIH
Healio Primary Care Peer Perspective Board member Primary Care Physician Fellow in Health Policy at Georgetown University National Vice Chair of the Policy and Advocacy Committee of the American Women’s Association Vice Chairman
Disclosure: Mr. Kuwahara currently serves as Co-Chair of the Hepatitis B Vaccine and Screening Advisory Committee and was previously a Fellow of the Asia Pacific Regional Association of Health Authorities working on Hepatitis B Policy.
