Employee Drug Testing

In increasing the cost effectiveness of federal employee drug testing, the government might want to study those agencies that have opted to collect drug-testing specimens using agency personnel rather than contractors. Other cost-saving opportunities would require modifications to Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) guidelines on the (1) current level of blind proficiency samples as part of agencies' quality control programs and (2) submission of negative test results to medical review officers. Although both requirements may have been appropriate when the guidelines were first published in 1988, circumstances have changed, and it is reasonable to consider testing changes at this point. The frequency of drug testing--the percentage of individuals subject to drug testing who are actually tested each year--can also be studied. GAO found that agencies' testing frequencies vary widely, ranging from 4 to 100 percent of the employee population subject to testing. GAO believes that it is reasonable for agencies to review their selected test frequencies with a view toward reducing them where appropriate. In their oversight roles over federal agency drug-testing programs, HHS and the Office of National Drug Control Policy should take the lead in reviewing these and other possible cost-savings measures.

GAO found that: (1) the costs incurred from federal agency employee drug testing result from meeting the Department of Health and Human Services' scientific and technical guidelines and the frequency of actual testing; (2) the potential cost savings included eliminating the requirement of submitting negative test results to a medical review officer, reducing requirements pertaining to drug-testing laboratory quality assurance programs, reducing the frequency of random drug testing, and collecting employee specimens with in-house personnel rather than contracting out for the service; (3) agency random drug testing varied in frequency from 4 to 100 percent; (4) positive test results remained constant regardless of the frequency of tests; (5) on the average, positive test results represented 0.3 percent of those employees tested; and (6) reducing the frequency of drug tests could potentially save $1 million.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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