Your DOT approved and certified lab

The DOT regulations require that motor carriers required to have a drug free workplace program work with a laboratory certified by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Service Administration (SAMSHA).

How do you get set up with an approved lab?

Most motor carriers work with a Third Party Administrators TPA who handles getting you set up with an certified clinical lab and a Medical Review Officer (MRO) (we cover MROs in another blog post).

The lab then has special DOT drug testing collection forms called “control and custody” (CCF) forms customized for you and printed and then sent to you. These are the forms that your driver takes with whenever having any required drug testing done. The collection site staff fills the form out and packages it up with special DOT approved specimen collection kits that are then shipped to the lab for processing.

What the laboratory does:

The Laboratory receives the packaged up urine specimen and the lab copy of the Control and Custody Form filled out during the collection. The Lab follows strict federal guidelines for processing the specimen and testing it for controlled substances.

What drugs does the lab test for and how

For DOT testing the lab runs what’s called a NIDA 5 panel drug screen that tests for the presence of the drug itself or the metabolites that the body produces when the drug is in it’s system.

Here are the five classes of drugs that are tested for:

• Marijuana
• Cocaine
• Opiates – opium and codeine derivatives
• Amphetamines and methamphetamines
• Phencyclidine – PCP

When the lab is finished they transmit preliminary results to the Medical Review Officer (MRO) who then reports the final results to the driver’s employer and/or TPA depending on how they’re set up.

Under the DOT regulations labs are required to store (for a period of time) the second untested half of the urine specimen for retesting if an employee wished to contest a result.  In those cases, after the notification of the request to retest, the lab will then send the remaining specimen to another certified lab for additional testing.

Generally you will have no direct contact or interaction with the lab pertaining to your account or test results. Mydrugtestingprogram.com handles getting our clients set up with a certified clinical lab and forms and MRO.