relatively new Program Collaboration and Service Integration (PCSI) initiative. According to the CDC, PCSI a mechanism for organizing and blending interrelated health issues, activities, “is and prevention strategies to facilitate comprehensive delivery of services”. The fact that multiple states have already merged these areas shows that the states either agree with the consolidation and or moving towards it to be better aligned with the CDC, or that a number of them already possessed that mindset and the CDC is taking their example. In an article published in 2009 entitled of Statutes With the Centers “Consistency for Disease Control and Prevention HIV Testing Recommendations for Health Care Settings”, A.P. Mahajan et. al. discussed the CDC’s 2006 guidelines on HIV testing, how states are implementing the update, and whether state legislation surrounding HIV procedures hampered their ability to successfully implement the guidelines. The update consisted of recommending that patients in all health care settings be offered opt-out HIV screening without separate “all written consent and prevention counseling”; the change designed to increase the number of people getting tested and reduce the boundary of stigmatization over potential risk factors. An interesting inclusion in the recommendations is that personalized HIV risk reduction counseling should not be required for patients getting tested and that they should instead be offered a referral for counseling. The results showed that 68% of states have statutory frameworks that are either in-line or neutral to the CDC recommendations, and so in essence are compliant with the recommendations, and that the remaining states would need legislation changes in order to be able to fully implement the recommendations. Additionally, 9 of the states with policies consistent with the CDC were made so recently, indicating that more states are likely to follow this trend. The finding of 68% is double the amount of states fully compliant with the CDC’s recommendations for HCV testing and risk groups, but the number of states compliant with the
relatively new Program Collaboration and Service Integration (PCSI) initiative. According to the CDC, PCSI “is a mechanism for organizing and blending interrelated health issues, activities, and prevention strategies to facilitate comprehensive delivery of services”. The fact that multiple states have already merged these areas shows that the states either agree with the consolidation and or moving towards it to be better aligned with the CDC, or that a number of them already possessed that mindset and the CDC is taking their example. In an article published in 2009 entitled “Consistency of Statutes With the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention HIV Testing Recommendations for Health Care Settings”, A.P. Mahajan et. al. discussed the CDC’s 2006 guidelines on HIV testing, how states are implementing the update, and whether state legislation surrounding HIV procedures hampered their ability to successfully implement the guidelines. The update consisted of recommending that “all patients in all health care settings be offered opt-out HIV screening without separate written consent and prevention counseling”; the change designed to increase the number of people getting tested and reduce the boundary of stigmatization over potential risk factors. An interesting inclusion in the recommendations is that personalized HIV risk reduction counseling should not be required for patients getting tested and that they should instead be offered a referral for counseling. The results showed that 68% of states have statutory frameworks that are either in-line or neutral to the CDC recommendations, and so in essence are compliant with the recommendations, and that the remaining states would need legislation changes in order to be able to fully implement the recommendations. Additionally, 9 of the states with policies consistent with the CDC were made so recently, indicating that more states are likely to follow this trend. The finding of 68% is double the amount of states fully compliant with the CDC’s recommendations for HCV testing and risk groups, but the number of states compliant with the