Massachusetts Senate Passes Bill to Allow Verbal Instead of Written Consent for HIV Test
The state Senate approved a proposal today that lawmakers say will provide greater access to HIV tests and bring Massachusetts into compliance with federal recommendations aimed at promoting more testing.
The measure reduces barriers to testing for the virus that causes AIDS by eliminating the need for doctors to obtain written consent from patients, and instead requires only verbal consent.
“This will increase testing for HIV because it makes it normal, it will be like getting your cholesterol checked when you get your annual physical,” said Senate President Therese Murray.
The bill was crafted to bring Massachusetts in line with federal health officials’ 2006 recommendation that states update their laws to make HIV testing more routine and widespread. They suggested that general consent for medical care, which is the permission required for tests such as cholesterol screenings, should be considered sufficient for HIV testing.
Only Massachusetts and Nebraska still require specific written consent for HIV testing, according to the National HIV/AIDS Clinicians’ Consultation Center at the University of California, San Francisco.
The bill, which now goes to the House, also includes a provision physicians have long lobbied for — a section shielding health care providers, institutions, and laboratories from criminal or civil actions as a result of sharing HIV information with the state Department of Public Health.
In 2006, Massachusetts health regulators began requiring physicians to start reporting to the state the names of residents who tested positive for the virus, to help disease trackers match infected individuals with treatment. But state law seemed to forbid that, by requiring physicians to first obtain written consent before sharing information.
“This is much better than the [proposal] that came out last fall,” said William Ryder, legislative and regulatory counsel for the Massachusetts Medical Society, a physicians group that had opposed an earlier version of the bill.
But the society does not believe lawmakers have gone far enough to address what it calls “long-standing flaws” in the state’s HIV law.
State law still requires written informed consent from a patient each time information is released from a patient’s file pertaining to HIV.
Physicians say that creates barriers to treatment because if, for instance, a patient is being referred to another specialist, the physician must still obtain written consent from the patient before telling the specialist about any HIV-related medications that patient is taking.