[MCOH-EH] Holding Blood for HIV testing for 90 days

[Nancy Rodway]

As a board certified pathologist and board certified occupational physician, your lab cannot exceed the 30 days without validity studies. And validity studies are cumbersome for the laboratorians.

Why hold them?  With post-exposure testing, the source results guide your clinical decision making pretty quickly.


Nancy Rodway MD MS MPH FASCP FCAP FACOEM



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________________________________
From: MCOH-EH <mcoh-eh-bounces+nrodway=hotmail.com at mylist.net> on behalf of Amy Olson <aolson9 at jhmi.edu>
Sent: Monday, September 11, 2017 5:59 AM
To: 'MCOH/EH'
Subject: [MCOH-EH] Holding Blood for HIV testing for 90 days


Happy Monday from Florida,

Our hospital is doing well in St. Petersburg. Many thanks to people who have reached out.



As I wait for the sun to rise, I’m going through some things and I have a question. As I understand the BBP standard, we are required to hold an employee’s blood for 90 days so they could decide at a future date to have it tested for HIV. I have yet to run into a situation where an employee deferred testing, but now that I have direct responsibility for the Exposure Control Plan, I have more interest in ensuring what is written is something we can deliver. Our lab is continuing to research, but when I posed the question about holding blood and testing within 90 days, this is the response I got: “It’s not that we can’t hold a sample for 90 days. There isn’t a commercial ref lab that has validated this particular testing for a sample >30 days old. That seems to be the dilemma for HIV ½ analysis.”



What are other people doing? Am I misinterpreting the standard?



Thank you,

Amy Olson

Director, Employee Health and Wellness
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