National Clinician Consultation Center

National Clinician Consultation Center (NCCC) is a cost-free clinical education service that provides healthcare professionals of all experience levels with prompt, case-based responses to questions about HIV, viral hepatitis, and substance use evaluation and management, including perinatal HIV and pre- and post-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP and PEP). All services are on-demand, and confidential, and tailored to the needs of providers and their patients. Previously known as the National HIV/AIDS Clinicians’ Consultation Center, NCCC has supported healthcare providers nationwide for more than 30 years, providing over 350,000 consultations. NCCC receives primary support from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA)’s HIV/AIDS Bureau, as part of the AIDS Education and Training Centers (AETC) Program. We look forward to continuing our role as a trusted source of support for clinicians, working side-by-side with their communities toward the goal of ending the HIV epidemic in our generation.

A Crisis and the Birth of Collaborative HIV Care Guidance

Since 1993, NCCC has supported primary care and specialty physicians, nurses, pharmacists, physician assistants, and other healthcare providers through direct consultation from our multidisciplinary team, which maintains up-to-date knowledge of HIV care. As care evolves and improves, NCCC continually adapts to the latest treatment and knowledge needs of the healthcare community.

In the early era of HIV/AIDS, healthcare providers in the U.S. played a key role in confronting this serious and previously unknown condition. Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center (formerly San Francisco General Hospital) was an early epicenter for HIV treatment, and quickly became a leader in HIV/AIDS management. The AIDS crisis soon led to new interventions to support and encourage major advances in care delivery. One of the programs to arise out of the national response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic was National Clinician Consultation Center (NCCC), originally called the National Clinicians’ Consultation Center. Clinicians with NCCC began to think creatively about how to best respond to the crisis in a way that would be broadly useful and supportive of all healthcare providers. The service, which was multidisciplinary and multispecialty, created a way for clinicians to receive state-of-the-science advice. The goal was, and continues to be, to improve care for patients across the country by sharing rapidly developing information from leading healthcare institutions.

The NCCC Warmline Becomes a Leader in the HIV Field

NCCC initially pioneered distance-based consultation with the HIV/AIDS Warmline. In 1993, the Warmline was formally established as a national service of the Health Resources and Services and Services Administration (HRSA) AIDS Education and Training Center (AETC) Program. The Warmline was in full operation with a staff of experienced HIV clinicians at the peak of AIDS deaths in the early/mid 1990s, and continued to provide support as antiretroviral medications were established as a mainstay of treatment. NCCC consultants assisted callers nationwide in implementing these early antiretroviral treatments for adults, children, and pregnant patients. Today, NCCC remains an important clinical decision support resource for all U.S.-based providers.

Adapting to a Changing HIV-Treatment Landscape

In 1997, the NCCC expanded the Warmline into a full-fledged program, adding a second consultation service for post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP). With the addition of PEP consultation, the NCCC began offering timely advice on management of occupational exposures to bloodborne pathogens (HIV, hepatitis B and C). The service quickly became recognized as the “national needlestick hotline.” Today, NCCC’s PEP services continue to provide thousands of consultations annually, including non-occupational exposures to HIV and hepatitis from sexual and injection drug use exposures. In 1999, the Warmline and PEPline were consolidated into a formal organization, the National Clinicians’ Consultation Center. Perinatal HIV consultation service was added in 2004 to address the specialized consultation and education needs for the care of parents living with HIV,  including pregnancy, labor and delivery, postpartum, and infant care management. In 2014, NCCC added pre-exposure our prophylaxis (PrEP) service to provide detailed consultation on PrEP as a groundbreaking HIV prevention tool. Responding to the growing syndemic of co-occurring health conditions connected to HIV, NCCC later launched two additional services: substance use disorder (SUD) management in 2015 and hepatitis C (HCV) management in 2017. Across these topic areas, NCCC has provided more than 350,000 clinical consultations since its inception. You can learn more about our funding partners on the Our Partners page.

Expanding to Improve Access to Expert Consultation

NCCC’s mission is to improve health outcomes across the U.S. by building the capacity of healthcare providers through evidence-based clinical education. NCCC is continuously expanding into additional management areas and disease models as needs arise in the healthcare community. Additionally, NCCC’s ability to provide consultation continues to expand into new modalities from our original phone services, including online consultations and web-based resources. NCCC’s prominence in supporting and guiding HIV care nationally is evident in our team’s participation on national guidelines committees, in major publications, and in HIV/AIDS working groups across the country.

NCCC works closely with HRSA partner programs, such as the AIDS Training and Education Center (AETC) programs and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), to continue enhancing access to best-practice care and prevention models. NCCC also provides specialized support to federal and state agencies, such as the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) and the Indian Health Service (IHS), to address unique care needs. Most importantly, as clinical education needs change with the evolving treatment of HIV and the shifting structure of U.S. healthcare, NCCC strives to meet those needs with accessible, evidence-based support.

All services are free of charge. You can help with individual donations and contributions of any size. You can make a donation through the University of California San Francisco (UCSF).