Practice Management Alert

Question:  Our practice has not performed any type of employee drug screening in the past. Recently, however, we had to dismiss an employee because drug and alcohol use was affecting his performance and endangering patients. Now, we’re considering random drug screening for current employees. What factors should we weigh before making our final decision?

Oregon Subscriber

Answer:  Random drug screening has its benefits; there are also drawbacks to this policy, however, and it might not work for your office. “Some business owners feel they have every right to randomly test employees for illicit drug use, while others think it unnecessary if they hire the right staff in the first place,” reports mental health writer Samantha Gluck in the Houston Chronicle.

Consider these pros and cons of drug testing current employees before making a decision. 

Pros: Drug screening may increase your practice’s workplace safety. According to the United States Department of Labor, 10 to 20 percent of fatal workplace accidents involved a worker who tested positive for drugs or alcohol. Employees who abuse drugs or alcohol can put co-workers and patients at greater risk of injury or mistreatment.

You should also consider the issues of job performance and staff morale. According to the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence (NCADD), additional problems that employee drug and alcohol abuse can cause include tardiness, theft, poor decision-making, sleeping on the job, loss of efficiency, lower morale of co-workers, and disciplinary problems.

Cons: Setting up a random drug-screening program can be a heavy expense for a practice — and there’s no guarantee that anyone in the office will test positive, rendering the tests pointless and potentially embittering staff.

These screenings run the risk of alienating workers who might feel that random drug testing violates their right to privacy, Gluck writes. This resentment could lead to reduced productivity and lost revenue. Also, workers who are against the drug tests might actually sue their employers, according to Gluck. “Even if the plaintiff loses the case, the business still stands to lose money from downtime needed to fight the case and attorney fees,” she writes.

Alternative: Rather than implementing a pricey drug-screening program, your practice might consider using impairment testing. “The tests are designed to measure basic cognitive functions that determine whether an employee is too impaired or fatigued to work,” according to Industry Week. The cognitive impairment test measures brain function, hand-eye coordination, reaction time, decision-making ability, and other cognitive factors, Industry Week reports. 

Impairment tests could be even more accurate safety tools than drug tests because they measure the worker’s current state, says Lewis Maltby, president of the National Workrights Institute.

Best bet: Consider all options, and whether random drug screening is right for your practice, before making the final call.