Dr. Jeffrey Kirchner provides free, confidential and reliable HIV tests in about 20 minutes at Lancaster General’s Comprehensive Care Center.

More than one million people in the United States are infected with HIV, but the prognosis for HIV patients has improved. These days there are many medications that can keep them healthy for a long time.

 

HIV testing at Lancaster General has also changed for the better, with reliable test results available in just 20 minutes.

 

The team of healthcare professionals at Lancaster General’s Comprehensive Care Center offers free, confidential HIV testing to anyone who requests the test. It’s done with an oral sample—a small swab put inside the upper and lower gums that can detect HIV antibodies.

 

Early diagnosis and treatment can make a huge difference, and the Center hopes that its convenient HIV testing will encourage more people to be tested.

 

 

“The focus of the testing program is to identify HIV early,” says Dr. Jeffrey T. Kirchner, Associate Director of the Comprehensive Care Center. “As with other chronic diseases, early treatment reduces the chances for developing complications and people can live a lot longer if they’re detected early and get good treatment. HIV is now a treatable disease, not a fatal one.”

 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that there are 1.2 million people infected with HIV in the U.S. and approximately 25 percent of them don’t know their HIV status because they haven’t been tested. Groups and physicians on the forefront of HIV care have been looking for ways to implement widespread testing.

 

Free HIV Testing   Tuesdays, 1-5 p.m. 554 N. Duke St., 3rd floor (across the street from Lancaster General Hospital)   No appointment is needed. For more information, please call 544-4943.

“Since 1985 there has been a blood test to screen for HIV, but with that test, it takes 10-14 days to get the results,” Dr. Kirchner says. “Many studies have found that 40 percent or more of people who tested for HIV with the traditional ELISA blood test don’t return for the results. With the rapid test that we use, we can provide the result in 20 minutes. If the oral test is positive we then do an additional highly specific blood test to assure 100 percent accurancy.”

 

 

Lancaster General has been a federally funded Ryan White HIV healthcare center for 10 years, but the leaders of the Comprehensive Care Center wanted to expand its services by offering free HIV testing to the Lancaster community.

 

The program, which began on July 1 and offers testing every Tuesday afternoon, has been very successful.

 

“People who come here for testing value the fact that it’s done by nurses who have great deal of knowledge about HIV,” says Lyn Mohn, RN, ACRN. “It’s a comfort for people to know that they can come in and ask questions of nurses who work with HIV patients every day and can give them accurate, current information about the disease.”