In the 2020 UDS, United States health centers reported 4,984,733 of their 15,485,847 eligible medical patients (32.2%) were tested for HIV at least once after their 15th birthday and before their 66th birthday..

Identifying candidates for PrEP can be challenging but not impossible. The first step to finding the right candidates involves understanding the criteria for PrEP. Not everyone is a great candidate for PrEP or can adhere to the frequent testing and monitoring required of PrEP patients. Some patients are comfortable using condoms and other HIV prevention methods, and providers should respect and affirm their decision.

HIV testing is one of the many ways we can End the HIV Epidemic. HITEQ's latest blogs offers strategies for leveraging your EHR to make HIV screening a breeze at your health center. 

These interactive infographics include HIV Indicators as well as information about underserved populations and patients who may be at increased risk of acquiring HIV, at the state level. Select your state in the upper right to get started. 

Community health centers have an important role in ending the HIV epidemic. In alignment with that important role, several UDS measures related to HIV screening, treatment, and prevention have been added for CY2020 UDS reporting.
 

To support Primary Care HIV Prevention funded health centers, HITEQ has prepared a crosswalk that maps PCHP tri-annual reporting metrics to UDS measures and/ or fields. This assists health centers in leveraging UDS reporting functionality in their EHRs to inform completion of the tri-annual progress report to HRSA.

This brief presents an overview of how health centers can utilize telehealth for PrEP access, or TelePrEP, for comprehensive care, and includes innovations and resources that health centers can utilize to extend these services to their patient populations.

According to the Rural health Information Hub, the risk of contracting HIV can be greatly reduced through Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP), but the medication must be taken every day and patients need follow-up appointments every 3 months. Some patients often don't have access to it due to stigma, distance from the nearest specialist, and a shortage of primary care providers willing to prescribe and monitor PrEP.

As part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Capacity Building Assistance (CBA) cooperative agreement, NASTAD released a Billing Coding Guide for HIV Prevention: PrEP, Screening, and Linkage Services. The guide, developed in collaboration with a coding consultant and the HIV Medicine Association, was updated in 2018. It assists health departments and other providers (such as health centers!) to navigate billing and reimbursement for HIV prevention services. 

Primary care plays a key role in ending the HIV epidemic. The Ending the HIV Epidemic initiative launched across HHS in 2019, setting forth four key strategies also called the “four pillars” of ending the HIV epidemic. Primary care in federally qualified health centers figures centrally into these efforts, evidenced by the addition of several HIV screening and prevention measures and metrics in the Uniform Data System (UDS) reporting. This webinar reviewed the outcomes of the first year of HIV Screening and Prevention reporting on the UDS, highlight opportunities for quality improvement, and discussed funding opportunities.

As health centers integrate PrEP for HIV prevention into their primary care services, it is important to align with the latest guidance and research. The PrEP checklist from UNC School of Medicine's North Carolina HIV Training & Education Center offers step-by-step detailed guidance for providing PrEP. This checklist can be used to inform workflow, EHR, and other health IT updates including order sets and clinical decision support. It can also be used as a reference for providers who are newer to providing PrEP who are prompted or alerted to a patient's potential need for HIV prevention services.

We can only End the HIV Epidemic if we work together, and that includes data sharing. Sharing important information, such as HIV test results, can help ensure optimal care for people at risk for or living with HIV coming to or from different health centers. Check out these strategies and tools to learn some tried and true strategies for data-sharing between health centers. 

In the 2019-2020 contract year, as part of the Ending the HIV Epidemic initiative HITEQ conducted an environmental scan to determine the role of EHRs and health IT in health center capacity and ability to expand HIV screening and prevention. The full report is available for download. 

Join the HITEQ Center for a webinar on how to develop a social media strategy to improve your health center’s HIV prevention and care outreach. Using the POST (People, Objectives, Strategy, Technology) method, attendees learned how to use social media more efficiently to reach your target audiences. We also reviewed social media platforms including Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, their uses and differences. Attendees received recommendations for social media management and graphic design tools at the end of the discussion.