With eight kids and 14 grandchildren, Glenn David Williams figured it was time to “clean myself up.” So he came to Turning Point, a Minneapolis drug rehab center, to deal with his cocaine addiction.

When free HIV tests were offered there, he sat at a table with five other men. One by one, outreach worker James Bailey pricked their fingers and put each blood sample into its own solution to be tested. About half an hour later, the men returned to the room one by one to get the same good news.

“God smiled on you,” Bailey said to each one. “God bless you.”

That all six tested negative wasn’t unusual. What was unusual is that a new test called OraQuick gives results in 20 to 30 minutes, with 99.9 percent accuracy.

It still takes a week or more to get results at most places because they don’t use the OraQuick system. Unfortunately, the week-long wait sometimes means that people don’t return to get their results.

A four-day test is available, but it’s too complicated for everyday use, Bailey said. It’s now used as a backup to OraQuick, the new test sold by OraSure Technologies of Bethlehem, Pa.

Bailey, outreach coordinator at North Memorial Family Practice Clinic in Minneapolis, is conducting a study on the OraQuick test for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“That I get people results in 20 minutes has been a godsend,” he said. “If they’re going to start changing their behavior, every minute counts.”

The quick test not only shortens the anxiety of the person being tested but gives public health workers a better shot at keeping the virus from spreading.

For about a year, Bailey and a colleague have been going to strip clubs, bars, tattoo parlors, shelters, drop-in centers and treatment centers and have found people receptive.

“Our study is to see how feasible it is for this to work in an outreach situation,” Bailey said. His opinion: “It’s a wonderful test.”

At Turning Point, Bailey swabs one man’s finger with alcohol, then pricks it to draw blood. With a small plastic device, he transfers a drop of the blood to a vial containing a developing solution, then puts the testing device in the vial.

If one red line appears, the test is negative. With two, it’s positive. When it’s positive, another test is done to confirm the results.