Key Players: Infectious Disease and HIV Services

While the patients may learn their HIV status in an emergency department, they cannot receive their ongoing care there. Infectious disease and HIV services (either in the hospital or thourgh a community-based specialty care clinic) can pick up where the ED stops. The HIV or ID clinic located at or affiliated with the hospital will be where most HIV-infected patients are referred. The clinic will facilitate patients' ongoing primary and specialty care, as well as provide critical linkages to needed social and mental health services, both hospital and community-based. 

Chiefs and staff of the hospital's infectious disease department and affiliated clinics need to be at the table early in order to lay out the process for linking HIV-infected patients to systems of care. One concern for the clinic may be having adequate resources to meet increased demand for services.

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