21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: STD Care For Two.

To reduce rates of gonorrhea and chlamydia, at least 31 states permit health care providers to treat patients’ sexual partners without ever seeing them in person, a public health intervention known as “expedited partner therapy,” or E.P.T.

When a patient tests positive for a sexually transmitted infection, the clinician provides medication not just for the patient, but for the patient to give to the partner as well (in some jurisdictions, up to five partners). Alternately, the clinician may call the partner’s prescription into a pharmacy. In Washington, the state also purchases the medication, regardless of the partner’s ability to pay.

A large study of Washington’s E.P.T. program, just published in the journal PLOS Medicine, suggests that the strategy lowered infection rates by 10 percent. But though many national health organizations have endorsed E.P.T., most prominently the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, it remains underused because most states do not cover the medications’ cost and many doctors are uncomfortable treating patients they have not evaluated.

Yeah, I can see both upsides and downsides to this approach.