What Is a TPA?

In the drug-testing process, TPAs manage the drug testing process for employers so employers do not have to do this themselves.  A TPA helps your company’s Designated Employer Representative, or DER with anything he or she needs.  So, your DER, doesn’t have to deal with the clinics, labs and MRO doctor directly.

Benefits of Using a TPA

Hiring a TPA to handle drug testing at your place of work has several benefits, including the following:

Larger Selection

By using a TPA like Comprehensive Drug Screening, you can order from a huge range of drug tests, which means that using a TPA gives you more choices of tests to choose from. When you use a TPA, you can take advantage of tests like a five-panel urine laboratory test, a 10-panel urine test, alcohol breath and urine tests, hair tests, Department of Transportation (DOT) required tests and more.

Streamlined Connection to Labs

Many TPAs, such as Comprehensive Drug Screening, We have more than 10,000 collection sites and laboratories across the country. This means that your company doesn’t have to sign contracts with clinics or labs and you don’t need to manage multiple steps in the testing process. Instead, you simply deal with the TPA, who makes arrangements with the lab – and then, at the end, you only have to deal with one bill.

Avoiding a Stressful Process

Handling the drug-testing process can be stressful, since there are so many moving parts in a drug test. During a drug test, an applicant goes to the clinic for a test. The clinic collects a biological sample from an applicant, then the clinic sends that specimen to the lab. (There are many labs that clinics can send specimens to, including Quest, LabCorp, Alere, Medtox, and more). Once the lab has the specimen, they analyze it and send the results to a MRO Once the doctor has the results, he or she then calls the applicant and lets them know if they have traces of a drug (which does not necessarily indicate the results are positive). The MRO doctor can then determine if the doctor has a prescription for the drugs found — and if so, if the levels found match the amount they are prescribed. If the applicant isn’t abusing the drug, the results will be reported out as negative. TPAs like Origin have backdoor-ins to labs and relationships with many MRO doctors and clinics. This makes the entire complicated process much easier on a company — who has many more day-to-day tasks to worry about handling, beyond screening potential employees for drug usage.

One Point of Contact

When using a TPA, you only have one person to contact about administering drug tests and collecting results. This helps simplify the communication process, freeing up time and space for people at your company.

Thanks for sharing!