LABORATORY-BASED REPORTING OF AIDS

To improve the speed and completeness of AIDS reporting, the Philadelp hia Board of Health adopted regulations requiring medical laboratories to report directly to the Department of Public Health all results ind icative of AIDS-defining diagnoses. Reports were used to focus active AIDS surveillance on physicians who had requested laboratory reports w hose results were likely to have diagnosed AIDS recently. One year aft er implementation, laboratories provided the first lead to 20% of all AIDS reports. Reports originating with laboratories reach our data bas e sooner after diagnosis and ascertain a slightly higher proportion of women than do other reports. Laboratory-based reporting offers a prac tical way to focus the limited resources available for active surveill ance on health providers likely to have an AIDS diagnosis to report.