The employer or Consortia.Third Party Administrator must send blind samples only if they cover >= 2,000 employees per year.
Samples are sent to any laboratory testing >= 100 specimens per year.
The samples must consist of known positives, negative and adulterated urine samples. These can be obtained from commercial sources that specialize in providing these samples (listed at workplace.samhsa.gov). Ideally neither the employer nor the testing laboratory knows what the urine sample contains (double-blind).
The year is broken up into 4 quarters (January-March, April-June, July-September, October-December).
For each quarter, the employer must send to the laboratory a number of samples.
number of samples to send per quarter =
= MIN(50, 1% * (number of samples sent in the quarter to the laboratory).
50 samples is reached when the employer sends >= 5,000 samples per quarter.
The samples are sent:
(1) evenly throughout the year
(2) just like any employee's sample with a complete chain of custody form (CCF).
The identification number put on the CCF is fictitious. The other copies have "blind quality control sample" entered in the name space or remark section.
It is essential that there be no way that the testing laboratory can know that the sample is a quality control sample.
