Ethical, financial, and legal considerations to implementing emergency department HIV screening: a report from the 2007 conference of the National Emergency Department HIV Testing Consortium.

Objectives: We seek to identify and analyze, from a group of participants experienced with HIV screening, the perceived challenges and solutions to the ethical, financial, and legal considerations of emergency department (ED)-based HIV screening.

Methods: We performed a qualitative analysis of the focus group discussions from the ethical, financial, and legal considerations portion of the inaugural National Emergency Department HIV Testing Consortium conference. Four groups composed of 20 to 25 consortium participants engaged in semistructured, facilitated focus group discussions.