Drug testing services for employers: choosing a drug testing service, a drug testing company, drug screening companies, drug and background screening, business drug testing, reliable drug testing and 3rd party drug testing

What each provider publishes about its own price

How to specify an employer drug testing programme

1. Write the policy before you buy the tests. Which substances, which employees, which situations (pre-employment, random, post-accident, reasonable suspicion, return to duty), and what happens on each possible result including dilute, adulterated and refusal. The policy determines the purchase, not the other way round.
2. Separate your regulated and unregulated populations. DOT-covered employees are tested under 49 CFR Part 40 with a federally specified panel, form, procedure and Medical Review Officer. Everyone else is not. Running them as one programme is a common audit finding and an easy one to avoid.
3. Ask which laboratory and whether it is certified. Federally regulated specimens may only be analysed by a laboratory certified by HHS under the National Laboratory Certification Program. For unregulated testing there is no requirement, but a certified laboratory is the straightforward way to know the result will withstand challenge.
4. Get collection, analysis and MRO review priced separately. Vendors bundle or itemise those three differently, so a headline per-test figure from one is routinely not comparable with another. Ask for all three lines and compare the total for a realistic mix of negatives and non-negatives.

The four links, and who is accountable for each

The collection network contracts the sites where specimens are taken and is responsible for collector training, the chain of custody form and the security of the collection. The laboratory performs the initial screen and any confirmatory analysis. The Medical Review Officer, a licensed physician, reviews non-negative results with the donor and decides what is reported to you. A consortium or third-party administrator, where one is involved, runs random selection, holds records and manages Clearinghouse queries for regulated employers.

One invoice from one vendor does not mean one accountable party. When a result is challenged, the challenge is almost always aimed at the collection or the chain of custody, which is the link furthest from whoever sold you the programme. Ask who the collection network is and what happens when a site gets a procedure wrong.

What drives the cost

Panel breadth matters less than employers expect: the difference between a 5 and a 10 panel is small next to the collection fee. What moves a programme's cost is volume, the mix of situations tested, whether you need mobile or on-site collection, and how many non-negatives you generate, since each of those triggers confirmatory analysis and Medical Review Officer time.

Random testing programmes carry an administrative cost that per-test pricing hides: maintaining the pool, running compliant selections, and evidencing that it was done. For small employers a consortium is usually cheaper than doing it badly in-house, and a pool of a handful of people cannot produce a meaningful random selection in any case.

Where this sits beside record screening

Drug testing and background screening are separate purchases even when one vendor bills for both. The prices this site records are for record searches: of the twenty-five providers in this record, five publish a rate, with advertised entry packages from $29.00 to $39.99 a report and a median of $29.99. Not one of them publishes a price for a drug test.

That is worth knowing when a proposal arrives with a single per-candidate figure covering both. Ask for it split, because the record search half is comparable against a published market and the testing half is not, and a bundled number lets a weak price on one side hide behind a strong price on the other.

Questions buyers ask before they order

What does employer drug testing cost?

It is quoted per test by collection and laboratory networks, and none of the 25 screening providers in this record publishes a rate for it. Ask for collection, analysis and Medical Review Officer review as three separate lines.

Do I need a Medical Review Officer?

For regulated testing, yes, it is required. For unregulated testing it is not required and is strongly advisable on any panel reaching prescription medication, because a lawful prescription is the most common explanation for a non-negative.

Can I run one programme for all employees?

Not if some are DOT-covered. Regulated testing uses a federally specified panel, form and procedure with its own records, and mixing the two is a common audit finding.

Is a bigger panel better?

Not usually. Panel choice should follow your written policy, since screening for something you would not or could not act on produces records without decisions and needs MRO capacity you may not have.

Screening rules by state