Are there feasible alternatives to name-based reporting?
Decisions about approaches to report HIV cases other than by name need to weigh the purposes and relative benefits of disease surveillance. Disease surveillance systems, such as the reporting system now proposed for HIV, are designed to help monitor disease trends, to provide information sufficient to target appropriate public health services, and may improve timely treatment and preventive services. By their nature, these systems are most effective if they place a relatively low burden on reporting providers, produce accurate and verifiable data, allow for necessary follow up, and are relatively low cost. CDC recently published an evaluation of two existing state systems (Texas and Maryland) which use a unique identifier for HIV case reporting. The evaluation found that the systems tested provided much less complete information than name-based systems; could not reliably eliminate duplicate case reports; greatly increased the complexity of health department follow up with providers to
