By Andy Davis
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Extension clears snag for Ark. parolee drug-testing policy
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — After reluctantly changing its policies, Arkansas has been given approval to continue testing its probationers and parolees for drug use.
Employees with the Department of Community Correction regularly test the urine samples of the state’s 51,000 probationers and parolees using machines or disposable kits.
In July, the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services ordered the testing to stop, saying the state lacked a required certificate.
Arkansas maintains that it is exempt from the certification requirement, but it agreed to a compromise. Now, tests that result in a referral for drug treatment will be confirmed by an independent laboratory.
On Monday, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services told the state it was satisfied with the response.
“We appreciate the proactive and collaborative revisions” to the drug-testing policy, David Wright, associate regional administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said in a letter to Community Correction Department Director G. David Guntharp. “We agree that the policy revisions, as submitted, will allow the Arkansas Department of Community Correction to continue operation and drug testing” without a certificate.
The letter ended a dispute over whether Arkansas’ testing should be regulated under the Public Health Service Act’s Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments of 1988, which set standards for laboratories that test human fluids or tissues for the diagnosis or treatment of illness.
The law exempts testing performed solely for law enforcement purposes, and Arkansas contended that its testing falls under that exemption.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said the testing is covered because it is sometimes followed by counseling or treatment.
“We just never did feel that we should have fallen under the CLIA definition for drug testing, and we still don’t feel that we should have,” Guntharp said Wednesday. “But rather than get into lengthy litigation, it was just easier for us to just change our practice.” The department tests about 900,000 urine samples a year, spokesman Rhonda Sharp said. About 10 percent of those tests find signs of drug use, she said.
Under the new policy, some positive samples will be sent for confirmation to Advanced Toxicology Network’s laboratory in Memphis. The lab, which is certified by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, charges $25 to test a sample for one drug, Sharp said.
But a confirmation test will only be used when a test is the sole basis for a referral. It won’t be needed if the probationer or parolee, confronted with the positive test, admits to using drugs or agrees to enroll in treatment to avoid going to prison. And probationers and parolees who request the confirmation tests will have to foot the bill.
Guntharp said he expects the confirmation tests to be rare.
“That was the easy way for us to end it,” Guntharp said. “It didn’t stop us from doing business as we had been doing it.”
Copyright 2008 Little Rock Newspapers, Inc.