BILL ANALYSIS                                                                                                                                                                                                    Ó



                                                                  AB 1382
                                                                  Page  1

          Date of Hearing:   May 11, 2011

                        ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
                                Felipe Fuentes, Chair

               AB 1382 (Roger Hernández) - As Amended:  March 31, 2011 

          Policy Committee:                             HealthVote:   18-0
                       Business and Professions         Vote: 9-0     

          Urgency:     No                   State Mandated Local Program: 
          No     Reimbursable:              No

           SUMMARY  

          This bill permits HIV counselors who are authorized under 
          existing law to perform skin punctures to administer an HIV 
          test, to also perform skin punctures for hepatitis C virus (HCV) 
          tests, or combination HIV/HCV tests, under specified conditions. 
           
           
          FISCAL EFFECT  

          1)Negligible direct state fiscal impact. 

          2)Unknown indirect state fiscal impact on state health programs, 
            to the extent that added flexibility in administration of 
            these tests encourages more testing, diagnosis, and treatment 
            of HCV and HIV.   

           COMMENTS  

           1)Rationale  . According to the author, current law allows 
            counselors trained by the state Office of AIDS (OA) to perform 
            rapid HIV tests, but does not allow them to perform new HCV 
            tests that function similarly to the rapid HIV tests.  The 
            only HCV tests HIV counselors are allowed to perform under 
            current law have a two-week lag time for results, and only 
            about 35% of individuals who take these tests show up for 
            their results.  This bill would allow HIV counselors to make 
            use of the latest technology to offer tests with rapid 
            results, improving efficiency of testing programs and 
            increasing the number of individuals diagnosed.

           2)HIV and HCV coinfection  .  According to the Department of 








                                                                  AB 1382
                                                                  Page  2

            Public Health, it is estimated that 50% to 80% of injection 
            drug users (IDUs) who are HIV positive also have HCV 
            infection.  Studies have shown that offering HCV testing in 
            conjunction with HIV counseling and testing (C&T) has proven 
            to be an effective prevention strategy for identifying 
            infected individuals and providing referrals for treatment.  
            An HCV C&T demonstration project in 2003 found that HIV 
            testing rates among IDUs nearly doubled when HIV C&T was 
            offered in conjunction with HCV C&T.

           Analysis Prepared by  :    Lisa Murawski / APPR. / (916) 319-2081