Name: How to Make Drug Testing Less of a Nightmare
Uploaded: 2026-03-12T20:30:06.737Z
Duration: 1 h 3 min 56 s
Description: How to Make Drug Testing Less of a Nightmare

Transcript for "How to Make Drug Testing Less of a Nightmare": Thank you for joining us. We are just going to wait just a few moments while we let people continue to join in before we get started. All right. Well, thank you all for joining us for How to Make Drug Testing Less of a Nightmare webinar. My name is Katie Williams. I'm the Senior Director of Marketing here at Shields Screening. And before our presenters start, I would like to cover a few housekeeping items. We will have a Q and A session at the end of this presentation and along the way and along with a survey to help with shaping that will help with shaping our future presentations. Your feedback is always vitally important to helping us make these the best webinars and the most relevant content for you. If you have any questions during the webinar, please type them into the Q and A section that should be right on the right side of your screen. And this webinar is being recorded. A link to the recording will be sent out tomorrow so you can watch it on demand. And that's pretty much all my housekeeping items. So now that I've got this out of the way, I will turn it over to Amanda Kearns, our vice president of delivery, to introduce herself, and let's get started. Thanks, Katie. Really appreciate everyone joining today. We're really excited to talk through the drug testing process as a whole and different tips and tricks to to really make it less of a nightmare. I think this is one area that we get the most outreach and the most questions on, whether it's because an exceptional situation came up or, organizations just trying to streamline their processes. This tends to be the number one topic of discussion for that. So really appreciate your time today. With me, I have John Odle. He is our director of operations, as well. So John and myself are gonna be walking through the slides today. We've both been in the drug testing space within background screening for many, many years. So we're really excited just to share a little bit about what we have learned through throughout the years on the process itself, best practices that we have seen within different organizations. And, hopefully, you walk away with a few bits of information that help your program and your processes overall. So in terms of content for today, there's gonna be six main sections. We're gonna talk about reasons to test. It's always important to know why. John's gonna dig into the process, which I really consider the meat and potatoes of the of the overall content here, understanding each step, what's involved in each step. So he's gonna dig into that. We're gonna talk through your people, right, how to better equip your people and and make sure that that they're ready for this process as a whole. Excuse me. We'll talk about policy and some just tips and tricks around your policy and then what to do when problems happen. It is not an if problems happen situation. It is definitely a when problems happen, and we'll discuss kind of the whys behind that. And then we'll we'll cap it off with just a couple final tips. And, of course, as Katie mentioned, we have some time for q and a as well. So before we get started, quick legal disclaimer. John and I are not lawyers. We we do not claim to be lawyers. This is not legal advice, neither expressed nor implied. So we highly recommend that you work with qualified internal or outside counsel when it comes to understanding legal obligations, regulatory requirements, that sort of thing. As I mentioned, we'll talk through a lot of what we've seen in the space over the last decade plus, and best practices. But once again, we are not lawyers. This is not legal advice. So just to make sure that we're clear there. Alright. So let's go ahead and jump in on just some different reasons to test. These are just some high level statistics, that are, you know, across the nation as a whole. And so on average, American businesses lose around $81,000,000,000 annually due to addiction related issues, some of which I'll mention here in a minute. One in twelve workers have an untreated substance abuse disorder, which is significantly higher, I think, than most people would initially think about. Physically demanding industries, I think, you know, when we think through physically demanding, those tend to be the ones that you think are probably gonna have some of the issues. Right? They they have about double the rate, compared to the general population of substance abuse issues. However, I think it's really important to know that white collar jobs are not immune from this either. We see about eleven and a half percent substance abuse rates within management roles, ten percent within IT, and nine and a half percent within finance and insurance. So there are industries where, you know, we obviously see higher instances of it, but there is not an industry that I would say is immune from this. It is, you know, something that we see across the nation, across industries. And as mentioned, costs the American business quite a bit of money each year in a in a variety of ways. So some reasons to test specifically, employees that use drugs are two and a half times more likely to be absent eight or more days per year. They're more than three and a half times more likely to be involved in an accident at work, and then they're five times more likely to file a workers' comp claim. So back to that $81,000,000,000, it's workers' comp claims. It's handling the accident situations within work, and it's also things as simple as running overtime because of high absenteeism. So those are just a few reasons why as an organization, it's important to to have a policy in place, know when you're going to test, what you're gonna test for, and why you're going to test. But just some high level statistics, as I mentioned, to help kind of explain the the reasons for testing here. Alright. So the process as a whole, as I mentioned, this is, really where I think you can get into honing in the process for you and your organization as a whole, understanding the different steps. The steps itself, there are six main steps within the drug testing process. Placing the order, the collection itself, the candidate going in for collection, the shipping of the collection to the lab if it's not an instant test or needs confirmation, the lab work, so the lab processing that, getting the results, the medical review officer reviewing any non negative results, and then ultimately, the result itself being delivered to you and your organization. So you see six steps, and I think the unique thing within drug testing that's different from other types of searches like a criminal record search or a verification search within background screening is that all six of these steps specifically involve people, which means all six of these steps, are open to human error. Right? They're they're all six of these steps require human to be involved in some form or fashion, whether it's placing the order correctly, whether it's going in and providing a sample, whether it is shipping it and getting it to the lab on time, what have you. Each step involves people, which really makes the drug testing process as a whole unique in comparison to a lot of the other, search types that that we have within background screening. So with that, I'm gonna hand it off to John, and he's gonna start through the process itself. Awesome. Thank you, Amanda. Yes. So this will be a walk through of the entire life of a drug testing specimen. And as she said, this is really the meat and potatoes of of what we wanted to cover in this webinar because it's so important and helpful for you all to understand what happens after you click that order button. Right? Like, what are the controllables? What are the uncontrollables? Where can things go wrong? What's going on at each stage? So we'll walk through each of these and, highlight the bullet points that we think are important for you all to know. And, it's worth mentioning too that, realistically, we could do entire webinars on each of these stages. So there's just a lot of information that could be shared, but I'm gonna cover as much as possible with the time allotted. But I wanted to just mention again that if I maybe gloss over something that you want more information on or if it sparks a question to just please utilize those chats. We have people in the back end that can answer those live, or Amanda and I can speak to those more at length in the end. So there's just a lot of information about to be shared, so I wanna do at least send some reminders on that. But with that being said, let's get started with the order section. So this is the section that, of course, contains the most controllables for you. What kind of test are you gonna run? Are you gonna do rapid? Are you gonna do a lab based test? What kind of substances do you want to test for? And then are you a regulated industry? Because if so, then all those previous questions will be answered for you. So a lot of these are just questions that you wanna think through if you're getting into drug testing or if you're just revisiting your program trying to streamline it. So we'll start with the type of test. And what's being referred to here is the specimen type. We all are, of course, familiar with urine drug screens. That's where most of our minds go when we think of drug screening. But aside from urine, there are three other specimen types that are available for use. Two of which I will talk about that we would ask to maybe avoid if you can. But oral fluid is what I'll put as the number two option. It is and these are in no particular tier list, but it is really up and coming right now. It's becoming very, very popular. A lot of great work has been put into the oral fluid world, and it's even going through the hoops and the wringer to get added to the Department of Transportation testing, which is a massive deal. So it's only gonna to blow up from here, but oral fluid is a a fantastic specimen to consider if you haven't already. Blood testing is another one. And with the subject being making your drug testing program less of a nightmare, I would say step one is to avoid blood drug testing at all costs. There could be a place for it, of course. You know, it's it's nice to have as a last resort, but it is just a very convoluted process. Blood specimens are very, very sensitive, and so it's just adding extra failure points to the whole process. They are expensive, and they are invasive for your applicants. Nobody likes getting stuck with a needle and and having to get their blood drawn right. So we would generally just say, if you can, this is a good one to avoid. Nice for a backup if real if you really need it, but urine and oral fluid are going to be great for the vast majority of of businesses. And then lastly, we have hair testing. It shares a lot of the same characteristics as blood and being that it's not quite as convoluted of a process, but the testing methodology makes the turnaround times a lot longer. So your turnaround times are gonna be impacted. It is also more expensive than urine or oral fluid. And then lastly, no one wants to have to go and get some of their hair cut off for a drug test. You know, what's up with the, the new guy's haircut? Right? You don't wanna put someone in that position. So, hair definitely has its place. And a little bit later on, we'll get into the differences of where you might want to use a hair test, for instance. But, generally speaking, like I said, urine and oral fluid are gonna be perfect for the the vast majority of businesses. But then once we even have that, we still have a secondary question. Are you gonna do rapid testing, or are you going to do lab based testing? So RAPIDS, I think a lot of you are probably familiar with. We've all seen those little cups that have, you know, the colors on the side. And once a a drug test happens, it kinda lights up with a color saying that this one's positive or this one's negative, etcetera. The thing is with rapid testing that it is still subjected to lab based testing. So if if none of the things light up, that's great. You have a negative on your hands. The process is done. But even if you do have a rapid test, if anything shows up as nonnegative, that still needs to be sent to the lab for confirmation testing. So please don't take that as a case closed. This person is positive. That must go to the lab for confirmation testing and then go to the MRO, as Amanda mentioned, if if need be. So we'll talk on that later. But if that is maybe sending off some red flags for anybody, please please reach out to us so we can get you into some confirmation testing. That is a a really big compliance issue, it's people's jobs at stake, of course, too. We we wanna be certain that, you know, this cup was accurate, that this is really picking out what it thinks it's picking out. Moving on to the panel needed. So what substances are you even testing for? Right? Do you really need that 15 panel? Could you realistically do a five or a 10 panel? I think, really, the goal with drug testing, to make it less of a nightmare is to get in and get out with what you need. We you don't want to have all these extra substances on your panel. Although maybe in a perfect world, yes, we would love to test for everything under the sun, but that is not a part of reality, unfortunately. So it's better to just get in and get out with with what you need. So I think there's some efficiencies that we can make there, that we're happy to to help anybody out and and talk through what we are seeing in certain industries, what other clients just like you are are doing, that could be helpful in that decision. And then lastly, like I mentioned, the the regulated portion. So if you have anybody, like, say, a truck driver that is subjected to DOT testing requirements, that is something that we can help you get set up with. Like I said, the a lot of your decisions will kinda be made for you, but, that's what we're here for as well. We'll just need to know what agency you're under, and we can help you get set up with, all the correct random testing pools and all the MIS reports and everything that that comes with with that. So once we have all of that answered, everything's said and done, you have placed your first order, we are now over into the collection process. And so the first thing I'll mention here is kinda back on the ordering section too, but what kinda time frame are you going to allow your applicant to go in to take their test? Right? We don't have all day. You don't have months to wait for them to go and take this test when they feel like it. You know, you want to give them some sense of urgency to get in so you can get, excuse me, get them in the in the door. But maybe you don't also want to give them, a super short time frame where they have to drop everything they're doing and and go in for this test. And so, we can put expirations, and a lot of companies will make it mandatory to have an expiration because, again, you don't want someone to have too much time to where maybe they start just chugging water, and they're taking every day that they possibly can to get something out of their system. Or maybe people are just gonna be people, and and they'll take every day that you give them, and they'll go in on the the very last day. So it's always important to to put a time frame there. And typically, we see I mean, we certainly have clients that will do one day, like, twenty four hours they have to go in, and they have their reasons for it. There there's really no right or wrong answer to an extent. But, typically, about the three or four day mark up to about a week or so is a pretty comfortable range that provides that urgency, but is lenient enough to where you're respecting their life and and their ability to to be able to go out of their way to schedule this drug test and to go in. So once they do get into the clinic though, what is going on at this point? What can go wrong? What should they expect? This is something that I know I didn't know before joining this industry, and I think a lot of people don't really think about. Fortunately, it doesn't happen too often. But once you enter into the official collection process, right, you sign in, you are back there in the back about to produce the the specimen, the process has started. A lot of people don't realize that if you leave without providing a valid specimen, that you will be marked as a refusal to test. And so even if that means that you hang out in the clinic for a couple of hours sipping on water so that you can provide a specimen, That's what needs to be done, or else, again, you'll be marked as a refusal to test. And I like to mention that, one, just so people are aware of that and can perhaps make time for that if they think that they might have a shy bladder, for instance. That's a pretty common thing that that we'll see. But, also for the clients too, because I can imagine a client seeing a refusal to test, pop up as a result for the first time that it almost, you know, takes raises your eyebrows of like, what? They refused to take this test? Like, it's almost like a character judgment, if you will. But very often, it is nothing to be concerned about. It is a very innocent reason. An example I like to give is maybe somebody's on their lunch break. They think, oh, I'll just run to the clinic real quick, provide the specimen. I gotta take that drug test. So they go in. They have a shy bladder that they weren't expecting, and they don't have time to hang out and drink water and hopefully produce one. Right? Like, they've gotta get back to work. And so, unfortunately, they left, which is a refusal to test. Although, they didn't, quote, unquote, refuse to take it. They just didn't have the time. So that's oftentimes what that means. I mean, you will always know the reason that we will provide those notes. It'll be on the chain of custody. So you'll be aware of what the reason is, but these are just things that people don't really consider. They don't expect to have a shy bladder, and they don't have the time to stay in the clinic. Another not quite so common reason, but it can happen, is things like specimen validity. So a specimen has to be within the 90 to 100 degrees Fahrenheit range to be considered a valid specimen. And so if one was produced that is outside of that range for whatever reason, again, they are going to have to produce another one, which might require some water being drank, and they still cannot leave until a proper specimen is is there. So some things to keep in mind there while they're at the collection process. But once they do get that specimen taken care of, it is signed and sealed and ready to go on to the next stage, which is shipping. Couple more things just to mention. For the logistics of the shipping from a clinic, some clinics will use a courier service is what it's referred to as, and it's basically a middleman that they are sometimes coming multiple day or multiple times a day to the clinic to pick up specimens and transport them kind of a white glove service over to FedEx for the official shipping. This is really nice for a lot of the major clinics that are in more populated areas. They'll have multiple pickups throughout the day. But some clinics that might be outside of town a little bit, they can't get those multiple pickups, or maybe they're not even using a courier service at all, and so they only can get one, you know, ship out per day. So for those times where, maybe you have a person that it's a really, really time sensitive drug screen. You know, you need the result as soon as possible, and even hours can matter. One thing to keep in mind is that it might be worth calling the clinic ahead of time and just seeing when their pickup time is. Because if their pickup time, say, is at noon and then your time sensitive person goes in at 3PM, that's great that they went in, but, unfortunately, it will not be shipped back out until the following day at noon. So sometimes if you call ahead, you can learn that schedule, and then maybe your person can go in around that schedule just to try to speed up those hours, you know, that that matter to you in the very end. And then also weather events. So the shipping process that specimens go through is the exact same process that your Christmas presents go through. We all have experienced delays in shipping. These things happen to specimens as well, particularly around weather events. The the big snowstorm that we all experienced not too long ago was a great example of that. When trucks can't drive on the road, when planes can't land on the runways, delays are going to happen. And so these are just things to keep in mind. Perhaps maybe if you have a say you have an applicant in Florida and it's hurricane season. You know? So it it depends on the local region, what's going on in that area, but it's worth calling out again if it's a more sensitive one or or one that you're hoping to get in soon. Maybe it's worth just checking the weather in their local area, checking the news to see if anything's going on just so you can be prepared and anticipate some potential delays there. But once the specimen does get to the lab, finally, it goes through the accessioning process to begin with. And this is just the official intake of the specimen to the lab. But one thing also to mention here that is related to those weather events is it kinda goes hand in hand with any shipping delays we might see. And this, winter weather that we just had, the example I gave, that's a great example here too because you can imagine that the labs are intaking tens of thousands of specimens every single day. And whenever there's a big weather related event that's halting all shipping, you know, across a big majority of the nation, those specimens aren't reaching the lab. And then once all that snow melts, now they're all reaching the lab, and now the lab has hundreds of thousands to take in, which they are not exactly prepared for. So there's still a bottleneck that can happen in tandem with those shipping related events, during the accessioning process. So you're not totally out of the woods once the snow melts, you know, or whatever does finally end. The labs still do have to intake all of those as well. And so the accessioning process is usually pretty quick. They're just dotting the i's, crossing the t's, getting all the specimens in and logged into the system. And at this point, they are tested in the order in which they are received, which is always a big point I like to to make known to clients. Very reasonably so, we get requests often to, hey. Can we put a rush on this specimen, or or can we, you know, even pay to to have this jump ahead of the line? Unfortunately, that is not an option at the labs. I I wish it could be, but I also can understand how that isn't really feasible for them. They have an entire automated system with hundreds of thousands of specimens. How feasible will that be for them to go and find all these individual specimens with rushes and put those to the front of an automated system? Right? It's just I can see how that wouldn't be feasible. Maybe in the future. Who knows? But, at this point in time and for the foreseeable future, they are tested in the order in which they are received. So once they do enter testing, it will go into the initial testing period. And here, I like to think of it as it's they're casting out a big net to see what they are going to catch. Right? So they're they're they're throwing it out. If they pull it back in and there's nothing there, then congrats. They have a negative on on their hands. The result is back to you. This whole process is done with this point. And this is the testing that you see done in a rapid test. So this initial testing that's happening at the lab is just happening locally in your little rapid testing cup or or oral fluid device, whatever it may be using. It's the same concept there. It's just casting this net to see if it catches anything. And then if it does catch something, this is when it goes into confirmation testing. And so this is the point that you would want to make sure that you are sending this rapid test to the lab at this point to undergo this different type of testing methodology. So at this point, we kinda get into more of, you could say, a forensic testing environment. And I might see if Amanda would mind sharing her little analogy that that I always like hearing. I always think it's helpful to hear. But, at this point, they're going into more of a forensic process. They are really looking in to see, like, is this substance what we think it is? Is this what the little device or the initial testing thought it caught? Again, these are people's livelihoods at stake. The least we could do is the the due diligence of confirming that is this a false positive? Is this really what they what we think it is? The lab really wants to be sure, and they want to be so sure that you can see here I have two x confirmation. This can even go into three x confirmation. The lab will do all of the confirmation confirmation testing that it needs to do until they can definitively determine what this substance exactly is. And, Amanda, would you mind showing or sharing your apples analogy? Yep. I'm happy to. So this analogy helped me significantly when I was initially learning the the drug testing process. I'm a visual person, and so this one always landed well with me when it came to the differences in testing and also, how they really work hand in hand and and are efficient, for the labs to to do. So for that initial testing, the type of testing to John's point, it's called immunoassay testing. That is the rapid test. So if you think about having a, a bucket full of fruit and within this bucket full of fruit, you're specifically looking to see, is there any Fuji apples in this bucket? Right? Are there any Fuji apples in the bucket of fruit? So the first thing that you would do is say, let's separate everything, and are there any apples? Right? And so if on first pass, you've identified that there are apples, then you would go into the next step. So this immunoassay or the initial rapid testing is just saying, is there anything in this specimen that could be amphetamines, that could be methadone, that could be methaquiline, that could be cocaine, or what have you. Is there anything any indicator that that is in the specimen? If it's if it's a quick no, that's how you get those rapid, quick, reliable no's. If there's something in that specimen that says, well, maybe. Right? So okay. Well, we've got a handful of apples here. Then it goes into confirmation testing. So when you're in confirmation testing, this is the part the the testing itself is called gas chromatography mass spectrometry, for any of my science folks. I I personally don't know exactly the science behind it, but, that's what it's called. And the technology there is saying, okay. Let's look at what's specifically here. So now we're looking at that set of apples that we found from that basket, and we're saying, are any of these Fuji apples? And we say, this one's a Jonathan. This one's a Granny Smith. This one's a Honeycrisp. Oh, hey. Look. I've got three Fuji apples here. And so in that confirmation testing, it's starting to delineate and say, is this Vicks nasal spray? Is this, right, poppy seed muffins? Maybe somebody just loves eating poppy seed muffins, and that's all they eat all day long. So on an initial test, it said, well, maybe there's amphetamines here. And then confirmation testing came back and said, nope. This is not amphetamines. This isn't illicit illicit drugs. Right? So that's kind of how I think of it of I have a bucket of fruit. I'm looking for Fuji apples. The first step is, let me just see if there's any apples at all. And then the second step would be, of those apples, are any of them Fuji or that specific type that I'm looking for? And that's kind of how the the lab testing works is you've got that rapid immunoassay test, and that one can give you, like I said, a quick verifiable no. But if you get a maybe out of this, this is where it needs to go to that confirmation step. It needs to go to the lab so that next step can really be processed appropriately and go through the right the right parameters for it. Awesome. Thank you. That walks in very nicely. I was going to bring up the, the poppy seed and Vicks nasal spray examples because, yes, they we very well even might come up with a positive, but this is where the MRO comes in because there are these false positive examples that the MRO is able to determine. So the MRO, that stands for medical review officer, and this is a licensed physician. Their job is interpreting lab results, looking at the context of it, figuring out what other information they will need to make a determination on this. And once they look at the results, they they see kinda what they're working with. They're kinda putting together their their thoughts and the general process. They are going to reach out to your candidate, to see, hey. This is what came back on your lab. Do you have any reason this might be in your system? Do you know why this might be in your system, etcetera? And they are going to contact your candidate by the phone number that they put on their chain of custody form. So this is another thing that might be worth mentioning to candidates is that they wouldn't wanna put their work phone number on this form. Right? Like, maybe maybe they're gonna go on vacation. They put their work phone number on there. The MRO is calling this candidate. There's no answer. Right? So it's always better to put a personal number on that form. But here, this is where they'll even talk through, like, hey. You popped positive for opiates. Have you had any poppy seed muffins lately? Have you had a cold for you know, you popped positive for methamphetamines. Have you had any Vicks nasal spray, for instance? There are a ton of different examples of these false positives and these over the counter things that can surprisingly make us test positive for for different substances. So this is the MRO's job in in determining this. For instance, a person might be positive for amphetamines, but they have a valid Adderall prescription. And so the MRO is going to get that prescription information from them. They will call and verify that it is a valid prescription, and if that is the case, they will overturn this result and it will come to you as a negative result because they did have a legal and verifiable reason to have this in their system. I'll quickly touch on the general MRO process as well so that we can get into what you might see when it comes to a positive result. So the MRO, their process is typically going to be that they'll contact a candidate once a day for three days. And they are going to be leaving voicemails. There is not going to be a situation where it's just this random number calling you and you have no idea who this is. Right? Like, they are going to leave detailed voicemails of who they are, why they're calling. And if they say don't get in contact, the the candidate never calls them back or they never answer their phone. After that three day process is over with, the MRO will release that result as what will typically be read as a positive no contact or positive non contact. It'll be something indicating that no contact was able to be made. Don't necessarily freak out at this part. That doesn't necessarily mean that it is a positive. It's they're just telling you we weren't able to make contact with this applicant. But the applicant can call back anytime, provide this verifiable information, and that will be overturned in the end. However, say back to the Adderall example, say this person does provide them with their Adderall prescription, the MRO calls and verifies it, and they're like, hey, this is a valid prescription, but for last year, buddy, that is not going to be able to be overturned to a negative. Right? They're clearly taking it outside of the prescription. This is not going to be something that can be overturned, and so that will be released as just a plain old positive with no other information as far as the contact goes, of course. So, yeah, that's kind of a a good overview of what the MRO does. Between the confirmation testing and the MRO, those are the most important parts of of the testing process, of course. You can imagine how stressful that would be to test positive for something, and you're like, there's no way that I'm positive for opiates. Right? Turns out it was that darned poppy seed muffin. So after all of that is said and done, you finally have your results. You're probably thinking it's about time, particularly on those ones that had to go through multiple confirmation testings and all the different stuff. But I know that was quick, but I hope that was at least, a way to shed some light for you on some of the small miracles that happen over the course of the life of a drug test and, just equip you with that knowledge so you can anticipate these things or maybe it sparked an idea of how you could better your process or or maybe share some more information with your candidates to to make it go smoother next time for them. But with that, I will pass it back over to Amanda. Awesome. Thanks, John. And a quick note for everyone too. We're we're going over more of a nonregulated landscape of things or a really high level look at the process itself. For any of our regulated clients that are out there, there are specific steps within each of these areas that even sometimes complicate, sometimes simplify the process, just depending. And we could do an entire another session just on the regulated side of things. So just a note, if you are within that regulated space, reach out to us. We're happy to walk through if you have any questions or specifics around, you know, your industry in particular. So just wanted to kinda make that note. But the general process is the same. There's just different requirements and some nuances that come from a regulatory perspective. So, as mentioned, obviously, people play a part throughout the process. And if you're like me, we aren't always the brightest. Right? And so it's how can we better equip our teams? How can we better equip our candidates and our employees to understand the process simply, and be prepared for, you know, a few key elements within it so that we avoid some of the what we see as as common headaches that arise just from a lack of preparedness. So helping your people succeed. Setting expectations is absolutely critical here. Them having the expectation on what the time frame is. Right? How many days do they have to take this drug test is really important. The expectation on what to expect when they get to the clinic. Right? If they leave the clinic without having taken the test after they've checked in, they shouldn't be surprised that it's a refusal to test. They should understand that ahead of time. That helps them better prepare from a time frame perspective, helps them better prepare if it's a urine test to make sure that they go in, well hydrated. It helps them better prepare in general for for what to know about that test. Right? If they know that the collector is going to be checking for temperature being within range, they're probably going to be less likely to to be tempted to try to cheat that portion of the test. Right? We see that happen a lot, where the temperature is out of range, which is why there's a process with the collection to immediately follow-up for a second specimen. So first and foremost, setting expectations of them just understanding, here's what you should expect. Here's how long you should plan to be at the clinic. Those types of just really simple, but also very effective, expectations for your candidates and your employees really do tend to make quite a bit of difference. Setting time frames, as I mentioned, this is really important for employees. I think back to John's point earlier, I've I've kinda seen the gamut of, you know, we have some employees that go in or some organizations that require twenty four hours. You gotta go in. You gotta get it done. And then we have some that honestly, it's a we'll call we'll call it very flexible time frame, where they'll just extend as the candidate needs them to. From a best practices perspective, I wouldn't necessarily recommend that because that just really allows time frame for an illicit substance to leave someone's system. But that's obviously where you would wanna get with your your legal team, your, internal or outside counsel, and determine what what time frame do we feel like best suits us. And then also making it, like I said, very clear to your employees, to your candidates what their time frame is. And then last, provide contact information. Not only your team's contact information if they have something specific to your organization, but also make sure that they have the Shield team's contact information. Our teams are are very familiar with this process. We are constantly in contact with the different clinics, with the laboratories themselves. And so we're we are prepared to help at any point. So make sure that they have our customer support team's contact information. We love to to partner with you all to make this process easier. So I think making sure that your people have contact information for your team as well as for our team, really does help within the process. So next, we'll dig into just some policy specifics. With this, the the few, items that we'll hit on, as I mentioned, we are we are not legal counsel here. We're not providing legal advice. These are things that we see regularly come up, where, you know, we would say, hey. We would recommend you discussing this with your compliance and legal teams. And those few areas are the type of test that you all are wanting to run and the requirement around that, the time frame allowance that you provide, and then different policies, retest policy, dispute policy, and your policy for exceptions. So I'll pass it to John, and he'll dig in a little bit more into to some of these different policy specific items. Right. So these next couple of slides will be graphs that are kind of illustrating what we discussed earlier in the whole process. So if you recall, we discussed urine, oral fluid, blood, and hair as the specimen types. And this graph just shows how the substances behave in the life of each of these specimens. So to quickly kinda set up this graph for understanding, on the bottom, we of course have the time going over to the right. So at the the 90 degree angle of this chart, that is the moment that somebody takes in a potentially illicit substance. And then as we move to the right, we go to hours, to days, to weeks, to months. And then the concentration is the y axis, so that is the amount this substance is showing up in any one of these specimen types. So just for a quick example, we can look at oral fluid and and blood even, for instance. We can see that at that 90 degree angle, as soon as that person took in that substance, it immediately starts showing up in each of these specimen types. It is immediately getting into your oral fluid. It is immediately going into your bloodstream. So maybe, for instance, for a reasonable suspicion test, oral fluid might be perfect because it's showing up immediately. Whereas we can see urine, it takes a little bit longer. It will take a matter of hours. As you would expect. You know, your body has to process it. It goes through your kidneys, all the different stuff to where, it eventually does start showing up in your urine. And then for hair, as you would expect as well, you've gotta wait for it to go all the way through your body, get all the way into your hair, not to mention the speed at which your hair grows for it to grow out enough for it to even show up in a hair test. And so, looking at it from that perspective kinda shows where we might, you know, want to, to look at the specimen type for for your particular use case. For instance, we will see hair used a lot in highly safety sensitive positions. So, like, the medical field for, you know, physicians and whatnot, you'll probably see a lot more hair testing in that industry because they're wanting to know things that have been, like, long term, you know, used by this individual. And then if we look at, as well, the height at which these arcs are going so we can see that, for instance, blood and oral fluid, it's entering those specimens immediately, and it will eventually reach its peak even just in a matter of hours until it starts then slowly filtering out of each of these specimens. And for oral fluid and blood, it will eventually leave those specimens in a matter of days. Whereas urine, like we said, it takes a little bit for little bit of time for it to get into the urine, but it will stay in there for weeks. And then for hair, it takes weeks to get into it, but it will stay there for months and months. I mean, you can imagine how the difference in hair length can play a part in this. But generally, though, as I've said in the beginning, urine and oral fluid are very well the most, well rounded ones and the ones that we see used the most in the industry. And then I love this chart as well. This is just a visual look at the actual turnaround times for that entire process that we walked through. So if we quickly take a look at the legend, we can see the collection time frame is in black. Transit is in the purple color. Testing, green. And then verified in orange. Verified is that MRO process where they're trying to get in contact with the candidate. But we can see very clearly, look at what takes the most time out of all, and that is for the candidate to go in for the drug test to begin with. So from the moment you click Order, we can see that over half the time, most of the time, it's just waiting on that candidate to get in for the test. And then second to that, it's just waiting for the test to get shipped and and make its way to the lab. And from that point on, we're looking at less than half a day oftentimes that, the result is back in the system and and ready for your review. So I I just I love love sharing this graph. It really just puts all of this into perspective. We tend to think of testing taking forever, but in reality, it's actually just getting the result to the lab, which is why a lot of clients will opt for those rapid tests when, possible. Alright. And then moving on to some key scenarios that Amanda was mentioning. I will reiterate as well that, you know, we are certainly not legal experts, but really just bringing up some situations that we see often to just make you aware of them so that you can think through these with your your legal counsel or compliance department. But retests are the first one that we will cover. So things to think about is just will you allow your candidates to take a retest? And then how do you respond if they do request one? Why you know, what situations are you going to allow a retest? If a certain result comes back, you know, what kind of results are you going to allow a retest for? What situation? So these are things just to think through so you can have it in place in your policy and so it doesn't create a panic when that does come about because it definitely will. Disputes are another one. What are you gonna do if somebody disputes their drug test results? Right? And how you order may determine how this works. Are you ordering your drug tests in tandem with your background screens that are in the same report? Because you it might change how you have to handle that depending on if you had ordered the drug test separately. There's really no right or wrong way to do it. It just determines how you will have to handle it in the end. So, again, it's just things to think through, things to keep in mind when you're creating your policy and the decisions that you're going to make off of that. And then lastly, any exceptions. So are you going to allow exceptions to your process? And if you are, then why? A common one might be, for instance, negative dilutes are a type of drug test result where this specimen, you know, maybe for heavy water drinkers, their urine will have so much water in it that it is considered diluted. They did the test as best they could. Remember, they cast that net out, and they didn't find anything, But there was a lot of water in here, so we can't definitively determine that. That will come back as a negative dilute. And so how are you gonna treat that? Are you going to give them an exception? Are you gonna have them just go back in and try it one more time? These types of things will happen. And so it's always good to to think about these things ahead of time and make sure that you have a process in place for how you're going to treat these. Alright. So what to do when problems happen? And as I mentioned earlier, they will. This particular process itself is so heavily laden with, one, people being involved as we've mentioned multiple times, but also there are nuance steps at each point that from a preparedness perspective, like, that is your best bet in anticipating any of these issues. So first off, I would say understand what options are available within your policy. If you don't have a clearly outlined drug testing policy, I would say start there. Get with your compliance team, get with, you know, inside legal, outside legal, your counsel, and figure out, okay, what are the important aspects for our drug testing policy? What are the things that we need to consider? And make sure that you understand all of those different options within your policy itself. Make sure that your team understands what your drug testing policy is as well. It just is going to allow you to make decisions more efficiently and effectively. Be prepared for the outliers. As John mentioned, there are going to be outliers. We see them regularly because of the sheer volume of drug tests that we get to interact with. But for the most part, as an individual organization, you you won't see these as often as, like, what we do, obviously. But things like negative dilutes, canceled tests, temperature out of ranges, refusal to test, There's a whole gamut full of different what we would consider outliers, that we can help you plan for. We can give you the explanation of here's what this is. Here's the definition of it, and then you can work with your legal teams to decide what you want your policy to to outline on those and how you wanna handle those, but be prepared for those outliers. Communicate with your shield team. Right? Like, we are here to support you. We are here to help however we can. We are here to like I said, if if you're like, hey. What are the most common outlier scenarios that you see? We're happy to help in those instances as well. And so we want to partner with you on this, you know, helping support your legal counsel, your compliance teams, honestly, just to answer questions as they arise as well. We're here to support how we can. And then lastly, know the time frames. Right? So to John's point, a few minutes ago, know the time frames of what you're going to allow your candidates to do in terms of going into the clinic. Know the time frame expectation for testing, whether it is a rapid test or it is a lab based test. I also think that it's important to know the time frames and the time of year and when you should expect to see certain types of delays. So if we're getting near the holidays, of the labs will shut down for one to two days around the holidays. It's pretty standard for them. And so if you have a a, you know, a very high level candidate that you have coming in and you're needing to get something done quickly, this would be where I would say communicate with us at Shield, and we can try to help work through what clinics are available, what options are available, what labs do we know, have different office hours and that sort of thing to to try to best be prepared for that. But knowing the time frames, knowing the time of year and the impacts that you're gonna face, are always that, you know, when those problems arise, you can be better prepared for it. So a few final tips. I think we've hit on all of this throughout the presentation, but just to quickly recap, work with the process not against it. This process is pretty well established across the nation in all of the different clinics and clinic networks. The chain of custody process is consistent. So understand what the process is and then build your policy recognizing where the difficulties may arise, where the efficiencies can be found, so that you can really create a process that streamlines things overall for your organization. Next, help your people know what's expected on all fronts. The better prepared they are, the higher level of confidence that they have, they'll be able to to recognize, hey. This seems off. And then call our Shield team and say, hey. The the clinic's saying x. That doesn't seem right. And then we can jump on the phone and make sure that it's just not a a new employee at the clinic front office that just hasn't been through the situation before or one of the other million different scenarios that we see come up. So the better prepared your employees are, the more efficient their process is gonna be. And the more efficient their process is, the quicker the overall process gets completed. Set your policy up for success. Just a few of the things that that John mentioned. But there's really a whole, you know, a whole gamut, like I said, of of different things that you can do within your policy to, one, have a a primary focus of here's how we're gonna run it and then being prepared for each of those exceptional examples. And then finally, like I said, have a game plan. Be prepared, not surprised. The best thing overall when it comes to drug testing is knowing the process and then preparing for the different scenarios that could arise throughout each step and how you as an organization wanna handle that. So that is the end of the presentation. I think we have a few minutes left for q and a. So I'll see. I think Katie's back with us. Katie, any questions that we wanted to cover? We do. And while we're doing that, first, I'd like to go ahead and ask there's gonna be a survey that launches here in just a moment. Once you see that survey pop up, if you wouldn't just answering those questions, it helps us better curate our content. But we did have some questions for our panelists. So the first one is: What trends are you seeing in the workplace drug testing programs right now? I can take that, I guess, first. I think I mean, lately, over the past, you know, handful of years, we're seeing a lot of clients having to start consider what they're going to do with marijuana testing. With certain states like New York, for example, not allowing it to even be tested for in the first place, you can imagine how that's creating a a big ripple effect throughout the industry. And so we're seeing a lot of clients, if possible, they will just forego marijuana testing. As I will keep mentioning this, but it's always, of course, good to talk with your legal on this before you make any decision like that. But marijuana is is a big one. We're seeing that being removed. And then like I mentioned too, with oral fluid coming into the scene so rapidly, we're seeing a lot of clients interested in that and working with it, adding it to their policy, adding it to maybe just their post accident testing. But we're just seeing a lot more use of oral fluid there as well. Yeah. Thank think. to just add a a note to that too, the other thing that we've started to see is an increase in fentanyl positives. So this is based on some of the laboratory specific data and the millions and millions of specimens that they process. And so we're seeing an uptick in fentanyl positives, which I don't think is surprising for anyone that kinda stays up to date on the news, but it has been a shift in the last couple of years from what we've seen historically. Otherwise, I think John nailed it with with what we see from a trend perspective. Thank you. Next question is, what are the most common questions you get from companies about post accident testing? I'm happy to take this one. So for post accident testing, I think one of the most common is around either clinic availability or mobile collection. Typically, the preference is mobile collection, meaning there is a collector that actually comes on-site to the scene of the accident and does that collection. I would say two main call outs when it comes to mobile collectors. One, it's really important to understand the price points. It varies location to location. So if a mobile collector in Tulsa, Oklahoma and a mobile collector in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma may have two completely different price points. So the price point is different. I think the second thing when you talk about mobile collection is, their availability and how quick of a notice that it it requires in order to get them on-site. So a lot of mobile collectors do events for different organizations where they're processing, you know, numerous different drug tests at different hiring events. And so they may be booked up two, three, four weeks out. So their capacity to actually come on-site for a mobile collection can vary, especially if we're talking in the more rural areas. And then very similar story with clinics. When you're in a more rural area, you're not gonna have clinics that stay open twenty four hours a day to be able to send in post accident situations or individuals that have just been in an accident too. And so that would be one area specifically when we're talking post accident as you're working through your post accident policy. That would be great to work with the shield screening team on, and we can say, okay. What areas do you typically process in? We can do site matches for what clinics are available, their hours of operation. And if there's one key or, you know, a handful of key areas that you you process out of, we can have, you know, already connected with mobile collectors and have that established and set up. Thank you. The next question that we've got, it looks like: What are the different testing panel options available, and how do companies decide which one to use? That's a good question. I I can take it first, and, I'm sure Amanda has some stuff she might mention as well. But, that's a really good question. I I think one thing that I would mention, upfront is that it's important to also maybe look at the state in which you are testing in because Quest Diagnostics, they have a lot of really cool data that they put forward every year of where all the different positivity rates were by state by state. Maybe California or Colorado, we'll say, is a good example. I'm sure we could all guess what the highest positivity rate is there, and it's it's marijuana because it's legal there. Whereas Oklahoma will have a totally different substance that was the number one highest positivity rate. So I think that would be a helpful thing to go check out from Quest is what is the highest, positivity rate substance for the state in which you're testing? And add that to your consideration, see if you can find a panel that does test for that. But I think commonly, you know, there's not really a one size fits all, of course. But commonly, you'll just you'll see some variation of a standard five panel or a standard 10 panel being used. And if a company doesn't wanna test for marijuana, then they might shift that to a four panel or a nine panel. But, generally, companies will start with a five or a 10 panel. They'll kind of decide based off, you know, do we really need like I was saying earlier, do we wanna get in and out with a five panel? Do we really need these extra five substances? Or is this maybe a more safety sensitive position? Maybe they're dealing with, more sensitive data or a sensitive job description where, yeah, we think, it is wise for us to test for those 10 panels, and then just kinda make some decisions from there. I think that leads us to our next question is really, what is the difference between DOT and non DOT testing requirements? I can take that. Great question. So from a DOT perspective, the Department of Transportation is very specific on what the requirements are in terms of what type of panel you can run. There's a specific chain of custody form that is used for federally regulated tests as well. The collectors themselves have to be certified DOT collectors. So, basically, every phase of the process has specific Department of Transportation requirements tied to it. For non DOT tests, it it's much more interpretive. You, as an organization, get to have a lot more say in what substances you wanna run, when you wanna run them, what your policy is going to dictate specifically. Whereas with the DOT requirements, the Department of Transportation tends to dictate what those requirements are to organizations. And then, obviously, for anyone that's in the the regulated space, the Department of Transportation, FMCSA, the the various organizations, within that audit for all of those. So they come through and they make sure that you're adhering to those requirements as well. So I think the the difference is non DOT, you get to decide within your industry type and with with your counsel what best policy fits you in your organization. For DOT organizations, it's making sure to stick to the regulatory requirements. And it looks like we've got one last question, although there is still time if anybody else has anything else I'd like to ask. What are some factors to consider when deciding between lab based and instant tests? So I I can take that. I think the first thing to consider is what your state allows. That is, I think, the primary factor in determining whether you can use those or not. Of course, if if you're hiring across multiple different states, it's it's finding the one that is going to allow you to streamline your process. Certain states don't allow rapid testing. Other states do. So if you're in a state that does allow rapid testing, I would recommend looking into that for sure. But I I think, really, just state laws are the biggest thing to consider. So long as you are shipping it, as we mentioned, to the lab for confirmation testing, then, rapid testing is is totally a viable, testing methodology. And and as I mentioned earlier, we're we're seeing a lot of clients start to incorporate that in their their policies. Thanks, John. It looks like that kind of wraps up all of the questions that we've had so far. Any last insights? Amanda? Yeah. I think, as I said, it's best to be prepared. So that's making sure that you understand your policy, that your team understands your policy, and that you understand the process that your policy is working with. So being prepared is gonna be your best friend in in any of the situations that may arise. Okay. Well, thank you, guys. Thank you, John. Thank you, Amanda, for all of your insight and deep knowledge into this topic, and thank you for everyone who attended. We look forward to seeing you at the next one. Again, a recording will be sent out tomorrow. So if you are watching this on the the replay, thank you again for watching, and I will see you next time. Thank you.