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Adolescents are disproportionately affected by sexually transmitted infections (STIs), and evidence supports expanding sexual health services to the hospital setting. Because STI testing practices in the hospital setting are poorly understood, we sought to describe current STI testing practices among adolescents seen in children's hospitals.

We performed a retrospective analysis of adolescents (14–18 years old) from 45 children's hospitals in 2015–2016, excluding visits with a billing code for sexual abuse/assault. We calculated rates of STI testing and investigated differences in STI testing by patient and hospital characteristics using generalized linear mixed modeling.

Of the 541,714 adolescent encounters, 59,158 (10.9%) underwent STI testing. After adjusting for demographic characteristics, those with an STI test were more likely to be female (adjusted odds ratio [aOR] 1.61; 95% confidence …