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The country of Georgia initiated an ambitious national hepatitis C elimination program. To facilitate elimination, a national hospital hepatitis C screening program was launched in November 2016, offering all inpatients screening for HCV infection. This analysis assesses the effectiveness of the first year of the screening program to identify HCV-infected persons and link them to care. Data from Georgia's electronic Health Management Information System and ELIMINATION-C treatment database were analyzed for patients aged 6518\ua0years hospitalized from November 1, 2016 to October 31, 2017. We described patient characteristics and screening results and compared linked-to-care patients to those not linked to care, defined as having a test for viremia following an HCV antibody (anti-HCV) positive hospital screening. Of 291,975 adult inpatients, 252,848 (86.6%) were screened. Of them, 4.9% tested positive, with a high of 17.4% among males aged 40-49. Overall, 19.8% of anti-HCV+ patients were linked to care, which differed by sex (20.6% for males vs. 18.4% for females; p\ua0=\ua0.019), age (23.9% for age 50-59\ua0years vs. 10.7% for age\ua0 65\ua070\ua0years; p\ua0<\ua0.0001), and length of hospitalization (21.8% among patients hospitalized for 1\ua0day vs. 16.1% for those hospitalized 11+ days; p\ua0=\ua0.023). Redundant screening is a challenge; 15.6% of patients were screened multiple times and 27.6% of anti-HCV+ patients had a prior viremia test. This evaluation demonstrates that hospital-based screening programs can identify large numbers of anti-HCV+ persons, supporting hepatitis C elimination. However, low linkage-to-care rates underscore the need for screening programs to be coupled with effective linkage strategies.20202021-09-01T00:00:00ZCC999999/ImCDC/Intramural CDC HHS/United States32473265PMC7440391841