We get many questions about the DOT requirement for Blind Specimens as required in 49 CFR Part 40.103.
As an employer if you fewer than 2000 DOT-covered employees, you are not required to provide blind specimens. So no need to worry about this if you have less than 2000 DOT-covered employees.
As an employer or Consortium/Third Party Administrator (C/TPA) with an aggregate of 2000 or more DOT-covered employees, you must send blind specimens to laboratories you use. TPA’s as they grow need to watch their numbers so that they can stay in compliance when they reach the 2000 or more DOT-covered employees.
To help make it easy for an employer to comply with the DOT Blind Specimen requirements, we recommend the services of PROTOX or Professional Toxicology Services Cathy Mansfield at (913) 599-3535, cathy@protoxservices.com. PROTOX has a turnkey program that you will find to make the process very simple.
An employer or consortium manager must have more than 2000 covered employees in order to be required to submit blind specimens.
To each laboratory to which you send at least 100 specimens in a year, you must transmit a number of blind specimens equivalent to one percent of the specimens you send to that laboratory, up to a maximum of 50 blind specimens each quarter.
The number of blinds you need to send to any laboratory is capped at 50 per quarter.
- 75% of your blinds must be certified as negative.
- 15% must maintain positivity for several drugs for which DOT required you to test.
- 10% must be adulterated and / or substituted.
They must be submitted throughout the twelve months. CCFs accompanying blinds to the laboratory must be filled-out like any other CCF. National Drug Screening will set up a fictitious company and provide the CCF forms.
Then you contact – Professional Toxicology Services, Inc. (913) 599-3535, Cathy Mansfield; she can set it all up and provide the blind urine and ship completed CCF’s and specimens to the Lab.
The cost from Professional Toxicology Services, Inc. is $24.00 per specimen for their service and urine, they will bill you. They complete the CCF and also send to the Medical Review Officer (MRO) a Certificate of Analysis for the specimens they send to the lab on your behalf. The certificate shows which specimens were negative, positive, substituted, etc. Additional standard Lab and MRO fees will apply from National Drug Screening.
This is a quality control program for the laboratory you are using. The idea is if you send 5 negatives, 1 positive and 1 adulterated sample that you will get back from the lab – 5 negatives, 1 positive and 1 adulterated test results. If there are inaccurate results, both the Laboratory and the DOT will notified.
