Plan for Mandatory HIV Testing of Doctors Delayed

Though clearly feeling mounting pressure to establish its position on mandatory testing of doctors for the AIDS virus, the Medical Board of California, which licenses physicians, decided Friday to postpone a decision on the issue until it can study guidelines being developed by federal and state health agencies.

Dr. Mary Jess Wilson, the Health Department’s public health medical officer, told the medical board that in a recent survey of 3,000 Orange County surgeons, who volunteered to be screened for the human immunodeficiency virus, none tested positive.

Later, the 19-member board decided to delay voting on a testing policy. Board spokesperson Janie Cordray said: “We’re just tabling it until we have a fuller picture of what the CDC (the federal Centers for Disease Control) and the California Health Department are going to do.”

In November, the board’s national umbrella organization--the Federation of State Medical Boards--approved a policy requiring testing for HIV and careful monitoring of doctors who contract it. The federation also suggested that all state medical boards require testing of any health care workers who perform invasive or surgical procedures.

Under its guidelines, the CDC urges doctors diagnosed with HIV not to undertake certain “exposure prone” invasive medical procedures unless they told patients about their status and also obtained approval to perform the procedure from a panel of local experts.

But last fall, the Federation of State Medical Boards went beyond the CDC guidelines and called for mandatory testing as well as a monitoring program to track infected doctors--enforcement of which, many say, could prove unwieldy in California.

The controversy over testing health care professionals reached a boiling point with the diagnosis--and subsequent death--of a Florida woman, Kimberly Bergalis, who contracted the AIDS virus from her dentist. Bergalis, 23, who had said she engaged in none of the high-risk behavior associated with HIV contamination, died of the disease in December.

California’s Health Department is expected to issue guidelines on HIV screening of doctors within six months.