IDSA joins other organizations in supporting revocation of the federal ban on federal funding for needle exchange programs.  Revoking this twenty-year old ban would allow adequate funding to states and localities interested in implementing this evidence-based HIV prevention intervention for injecting drug users. 

The Infectious Diseases Society of America, the HIV Medicine Association (HIVMA), and the Center for Global Health Policy strongly support the Obama administration’s move to lift the two-decades-old ban on travel and immigration to the U.S. by HIV-positive individuals.

IDSA has endorsed the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America’s (SHEA) Position Statement: Interim Guidance on Infection Control Precautions for Novel Swine-Origin Influenza A H1N1 in Healthcare Facilities. This science-based statement supports updating CDC guidance, advocating the same practices recommended for seasonal influenza virus at this time.

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A coalition of medical societies sent a letter to U.S. Senators supporting its investment in Comparative Effectiveness Research (CER). The coalition urges the Senate to maintain its investment in CER so that physicians can continue to rely on evidence-based medicine to provide quality care to its patients.

The Society joins SHEA in urging the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to review its Hospital-Acquired Conditions payment policy before identifying additional conditions for non-payment. The comments also respond to CMS' proposal to add eight HAI quality measures to its Reporting Hospital Quality Data for Annual Payment Update (RHQDAPU).

Information designed to explain Medicare's quality improvement efforts to our clinician members and their staff. Please go to the PQRI Measure Specifications tool for a list of measures that may be reportable by ID physicians as well as for more detailed reporting information, including coding instructions.

Physicians face steep payment cuts beginning in 2010 unless Congress finds a long-term and sustainable solution to the physician payment problem.

The Society joined a coalition of medical groups in urging the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to use statutory authority granted by the Medicare Improvements for Patients and Providers Act of 2008 to cover all adult vaccines under Medicare Part B. Currently, while influenza, pneumococcal, and hepatitis B vaccines are coverd under Part B, all other vaccines are covered under Medicare's Prescription Drug Benefit (Part D). IDSA has supported previous attempts to shift all Medicare-covered vaccines to Part B due to access issues and quality concerns that have resulted from treating vaccines as prescription drugs under Part D.

Leading disease experts today called on President Obama and Congress to mount a concerted and comprehensive response to the deadly alliance between HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis. The call to action from America’s top HIV/TB scientists and physicians comes in the wake of a new report, “Deadly Duo: The Synergy Between HIV/AIDS and Tuberculosis,”(PDF) from the Center for Global Health Policy, released at a Capitol Hill briefing today.