Have you been waiting longer than usual for your drug testing results?
From natural disasters to staffing shortages and supply chain issues, laboratories throughout the country have been dealing with a “perfect storm” that is creating lengthy turnaround times and frustrated employers.
This issue is making it challenging for employers (who may be dealing with their own staffing shortages) to make hiring decisions in a timely manner. It’s also impacting random drug testing programs and forcing employers to wait longer for their results.
How Long Have Delays Been Occurring?
At Good Egg, we started seeing these extreme delays a few months ago when the nation’s largest vendor was heavily impacted by Hurricane Ida. With one of their largest facilities down due to storm damage, they had to re-route specimens to other laboratories for processing. This created additional stress on an industry that was already taxed due to both staffing shortages and increased testing demands that have resulted from the COVID pandemic.
When Can We Expect a Return to Normal?
Although many of the largest labs have acknowledged the delays, we have not received a definitive timeline for when the issue will be resolved. Part of the problem, is the number of factors at play. While they are committed to working through the backlog and getting back to business as usual, there are factors out of their control that are contributing to the delays, such as a severe supply chain disruption which is making it challenging for labs to get the equipment needed for testing.
This supply chain disruption is also creating shipping delays, with specimens taking longer to journey from the collection site to the testing labs – putting labs behind before they even receive the samples for testing.
What Can Employers do in the Meantime?
At Good Egg, we’re recommending that customers reach out to us if they’re experiencing long turnaround times on any of their drug testing results so that we can investigate the issue on their behalf and order a rescreen, if necessary. Right now, we recommend reaching out to us to investigate any tests that are outstanding for more than 3-4 weeks.
Otherwise, we encourage employers to plan ahead as much as possible – especially when hiring new employees where time is of the essence. Getting those tests completed as quickly as possible – and then both expecting delays and communicating that expectation to candidates – will be key to navigating a successful hiring and onboarding process for the coming months.
We’ll continue to monitor the situation and provide updates, when available. If you’re a Good Egg customer, we also encourage you to reach out any time with questions or concerns about this issue.
We do appreciate your patience during this challenging time and are proactively doing everything possible on our end to ensure your results are processed as quickly as possible.
