A survey of HIV care in the UK: results of British HIV Association (BHIVA) National Audit 2010

The aim of the 2010 BHIVA audit was to assess the impact of the 2008 UK HIV testing guidelines on clinical practice. Here, we report one aspect of the audit comprising a survey of local testing policy and practice at centres providing adult HIV services across the UK. Selected recommendations from the 2008 national HIV testing guidelines were assessed as target outcomes and the percentages of sites and subjects meeting these recommendations were calculated. One hundred and thirty-two sites responded to the survey and many are actively promoting HIV testing locally. Sites report HIV testing is routine in genitourinary (GU) medicine and antenatal services but offered selectively in other clinical areas. Encouragingly, 21 (16%) report some local general practitioner practices are offering testing routinely to new patients at registration. However, the time to receive non-urgent HIV test results exceeds 72 hours in 29% of sites. In conclusion, HIV testing needs to continue to expand across clinical settings to reduce the number of patients living with undiagnosed infection. Laboratory turnaround time needs to improve to ensure non-urgent HIV test results are available within 72 hours.