Pubdate: Sun, 09 Apr 2006
Source: Spokesman-Review (WA)
Copyright: 2006 The Spokesman-Review
Contact:  http://www.spokesmanreview.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/417
Author: Tom Sowa, Staff writer
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/testing.htm (Drug Testing)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/pot.htm (Marijuana)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mdma.htm (Ecstasy)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/meth.htm (Methamphetamine)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topics/PCP
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topics/opiates
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topics/morphine
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/heroin.htm (Heroin)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topics/saliva+testing
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topics/hair+testing
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topic/date+rape

Liquid Assets:

PAML SEEING FAST GROWTH IN DRUG SCREENING

The positive cash flow at Spokane's largest medical test lab is 
yellow, not green, and comes in 30-milliliter bottles shipped from 
around the western United States.

Pathology Associates Medical Laboratories, owned by Providence Health 
and Services, has seen a steady increase in the number of tests it 
does on urine specimens provided by companies and facilities from as 
far away as Wyoming and Alaska.

Six years ago PAML's labs performed tests on about 600 urine 
specimens per day, collected in the Inland Northwest.

Today it handles 1,000 urine specimens gathered by employers or 
agencies and shipped by courier or airplane to Spokane. About 85 
percent of the samples come from companies that want to know if 
workers are using illegal drugs or if those drugs played a part in a 
work-related accident or event.

By far the largest percentage of those companies want to test for the 
"NIDA 5" - the five most commonly used illegal drugs identified by 
the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

Those five - marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamine, PCP and opiates 
including morphine - are the five drugs the federal government 
specifically looks for when testing its employees and others in 
private industries involved in safety-sensitive jobs.

When bus drivers for Spokane Transit need to go through a random 
urine test, their results are shipped to PAML, where workers process 
the specimens using expensive equipment that can produce 2,400 test 
results an hour. Each specimen, after delivery, can be tested for a 
wide array of drugs.

When county or city governments think of hiring firemen or police 
officers, one of the first steps in the process is for PAML to 
collect a specimen and test if they're using drugs.

PAML's drug-testing group - called forensic toxicology - has been in 
operation about 20 years. In recent years it has grown about 15 
percent a year, and is expected to continue at that pace, said Dave 
Michaelsen, PAML's toxicology group manager.

That growth, at least in recent years, is tied to an expanding 
regional economy, said Tom Tiffany, chief executive of PAML, whose 
offices are on the South Hill two blocks south of Sacred Heart Medical Center.

"When the job market is strong and hiring is up, we get an increase 
in business (for drug tests)," Tiffany said.

PAML's overall business doesn't depend on workplace drug tests; 
toxicology only accounts for about 10 percent of the company's total 
revenue, said Tiffany.

But the annual 15 percent to 20 percent growth in the toxicology 
group is impressive: "It's more (growth) than the entire PAML total 
figure," he said, which is closer to half of the toxicology group's 
growth rate.

Of those 1,000 daily urine samples coming in, about 85 percent are 
from workers, either looking to be hired or required to take a test 
on a recurring basis. The other 15 percent are tests done for clinics 
and drug treatment programs needing information to track patients and 
ensure they're either not using controlled drugs or are correctly 
taking medications at prescribed doses.

Mike Mackay, owner of Mackay Manufacturing Inc. in the Spokane 
Valley, requires all job applicants to submit to drug tests as a 
condition of hiring. He's done that for 10 years and considers the 
cost of the test - about $120 - worthwhile. That $120 is for more 
than a drug screen at PAML; it includes a complete physical exam and 
hearing test provided by other firms, Mackay said.

He knows the screening eliminates some qualified workers in a tough 
hiring market. "But I know it's worth the trouble. We end up with a 
better quality work crew," he said.

The money PAML charges for drug tests varies widely, depending on the 
complexity of the tests, the volume of specimens a company produces 
yearly and the overhead involved in collecting and shipping the 
specimens to the Spokane lab.

For most tests for the NIDA 5, PAML would charge a customer an 
average of $15 per specimen, said Michaelsen.

He and others in the industry keep track of how their competitors in 
the drug-test market are doing. PAML's major regional competitor is 
the Seattle office of LabCorp., a national company with more than $3 
billion in annual sales.

"There are a triad of factors we offer - speed, accuracy and price," 
said Michaelsen. "But you can't get all three. If you want cheap and 
fast, you won't get accurate. If you want fast and accurate, you give 
up (low) price," he said.

Accuracy is a key issue for customers. Many companies have a human 
resources employee whose job includes tracking drug test results and 
insuring that any positive test results can be confirmed.

Each time a urine sample tests positive for a substance, PAML's 
technicians then have to take a second sample from the specimen and 
verify the results.

The second step in the process usually weeds out false positives and 
results that come about due to the equipment reacting to other 
chemicals or drugs in the urine, said Michaelsen.

For instance, out of all tests conducted at PAML in 2005 for the 
presence of marijuana, about 3.2 percent of samples tested positive 
at first. The number of confirmed marijuana tests dropped to 3.04 
percent when additional tests were done - from 5,660 to 5,337 
instances - according to Michaelsen.

That PAML number, incidentally, is higher than the national rate 
reported by Quest Diagnostics Inc., a New Jersey-based publicly 
traded firm that performs millions of workplace drug tests each year. 
Quest officials reported that marijuana was positively identified in 
2.65 percent of all workplace tests it did for its U.S. customers during 2005.

PAML keeps all positive test samples for at least a year. Tests that 
are clean are discarded in about three days.

Tiffany sees nothing but positive growth numbers for PAML's 
toxicology services over the next few years. But changes in the 
toxicology industry will lead PAML to invest in new equipment, he said.

One change on the horizon is the introduction of saliva testing and 
hair testing, both of which are considered more accurate, less-error 
prone methods of screening. Both methods would cost more to do and 
will require PAML to invest in additional technology, said Tiffany.

The industry is already moving in that direction, said Barry Sample, 
the director of science and technology for employer accounts at Quest 
Diagnostics.

"It's become a big discussion nationwide, the need for a more 
accurate system of testing for workplace drugs," he said. New methods 
could allow companies like PAML to end the cat-and-mouse game of 
tracking the assorted ways people adulterate urine samples, said Sample.

He pointed to the 2005 incident at a Minnesota airport when a 
professional football player was found carrying a product sold as a 
way of disguising the presence of marijuana in a drug test.

"Using hair or oral fluids will make the collection of samples much 
simpler. There will not be the question of unobserved collection. You 
just get the hair or the oral fluid, and put it in a sealed 
container," said Sample.

Michaelsen said the best way to spot invalid or adulterated urine 
samples is a lab test of specific gravity - a number closely tied to 
its chemical composition.

"If people try to add water, or even Mountain Dew, it changes the 
specific gravity that we should be seeing in our tests," he said.

As PAML continues to watch where the workplace drug test market is 
headed, it also listens to the changing needs of individual 
customers, said Michaelsen.

Every year, it adds tests to track for the presence of drugs now on 
its customers' radar screens. In recent years, for example, PAML 
added tests to identify MDMA, the clinical term for the drug Ecstasy.

This year, PAML will be adding two or three new drugs to its sexual 
assault date-rape panel. In cases of suspected date rape, law 
enforcement asks hospitals to gather a victim's urine sample. It's 
then sent to PAML to identify which drug was used, said Michaelsen.

A focus on customer satisfaction also means learning when not to 
report some drug results, Michaelsen said.

In recent years some customers have told PAML not to report positive 
results for marijuana use among some employees.

"My guess is that the company has no problem tolerating what it 
considers a social drug," he said. "Or it may be that they don't want 
to lose a large number of their workers" who might test positive for 
marijuana, he surmised. 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake