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A Second Look at the Cost of Mandatory Human Immunodeficiency Virus and Hepatitis B Virus Testing for Healthcare Workers Performing Invasive Procedures

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 June 2016

Gerard Russo
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, Hawaii
Sumner J. La Croix*
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, Hawaii
*
Department of Economics, 2424 Maile Way, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, Hawaii 96822

Extract

Recently in this journal, Dr. Julie Gerberding analyzed the financial cost to a hospital of testing healthcare workers for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and hepatitis B virus (HBV) and restricting the employment of healthcare workers infected with these viruses.’ Dr. Gerberding calculated that a 350-bed university-affiliated public teaching hospital in San Francisco, California, would incur an annual cost of $433,875 to test healthcare workers performing invasive procedures and a cost of $402,125 to replace and retrain HIV-infected healthcare workers. On the basis of these estimates, she concluded that “the total cost of implementing [such] a testing program...for all healthcare workers is staggering” and that other methods of reducing the risk of HIV transmission from healthcare workers to patients should be considered more carefully.

Type
AIDS
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America 1992

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