• Assay integrity is maintained through the regular assay of quality control material.

• Participation in external quality assurance programmes ensures the proficiency of staff and equipment.

• In the event of results being challenged, a secondary referee specimen, with security seals intact, shall be made available for testing with the consent of the donor. 

• All samples are stored in a monitored secure refrigerated area.

• Negative samples are stored for one month. Positive samples are stored for three months. Donor, GP and clinic samples are stored for one month.

Douglass Hanly Moir Pathology (DHM) is committed to ensuring the privacy and confidentiality of personal information. Our company complies with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) (Privacy Act), the associated Australian Privacy Principles (APPs) and state or territory legislation that governs how private sector health service providers should handle personal information, including, but not limited to, health information.

What types of information do we collect and hold?

The type of personal information we collect depends on who you are, our relationship with you and the nature of our interaction with you. It will include only the information that is: 

• Reasonably necessary for us to engage with you in the usual course of our business 
• Necessary to provide you with services (including, in the case of patients, coordinating and communicating with your healthcare providers) 
• Required for administrative and internal business purposes related to the services we provide to you 

Please click here to view our privacy policy.

The drug detection time is the time from the last dose of the drug until a negative screening result is obtained using the cut-off levels in the table under 'Reporting levels'. Detection times vary with different drugs and different individuals and according to the amount and frequency of drug taken.

A confirmed positive result reveals the presence of a drug in the specimen at or above the 'cut-off' level. It gives no information about how or when the drug was taken. It also does not provide an indication of impairment. A positive result may relate to previous drug use with no current physical effects. Positive results are reported as 'Positive', while a negative result is reported as 'Negative'.

The initial test is a screening test which identifies a range of illicit and therapeutic substances. If the initial screening test is positive, a second unopened sample aliquotted from the original specimen is tested by a different method for confirmation of the initial result. 

The presence of each drug or metabolite is tested for at or above a predefined cut-off level (see 'Reporting levels' below). These levels are dictated by International Standards for urine drug testing and defined in the AS/NZS 4308:2008 standard. The cut-off levels are established because the aim of workplace testing is usually to identify significant residues of the targeted drug, not minute traces. For a result to be 'positive', the amount of the drug detected must be at or above the cut-off level. If a drug is detected but the level is below the cut-off the result will be negative. The cut-off levels for some classes differ for screening and confirmation. This is due to the non-specific nature of the screening assay versus the highly specific nature of the GC/MS confirmation.

DHM's Toxicology Department distributes a combined request and Chain-of-Custody form, enabling all the client details and the tracking of the specimen to be recorded on the one form.

It is important to complete the form fully and correctly. Ensure that the client's full name, date of birth and date of collection are recorded on the form. Details such as medication which the client may be taking are important in interpreting the results of the urine drug test. It is therefore necessary in interpreting results to be aware of therapeutic drugs which the client may be taking.

• Testing for drugs and alcohol on urine, and drugs on oral fluid, in conformance with the AS/NZS 4308:2008 and AS/NZS 4760:2019 toxicology standards, as well as ISO/IEC 17025 and ISO/AS 15189. 
• Strict adherence to Chain-of-Custody (COC) protocols, designed to protect the integrity of the specimen and to  ensure that reports can be used for evidentiary purposes.
• Specifically designated collection centres suitable for supervised collection of urine specimens for drug testing
• Qualified staff trained in collection procedures
• Tamper-evident collection kits & transport satchels
• Accredited screening and confirmatory testing procedures
• All drug and alcohol testing, including urine, oral fluid and breath testing, are available by appointment, either onsite or at any of our specialised COC collection centres.

Depending on time of arrival in the laboratory, samples are processed for screening either the same day or the morning after arrival in the laboratory. Hence negative screening results are available within 24 hours of the specimen arriving in the laboratory.

Positive results are available within 48 hours of arrival in the laboratory (confirmation of 1 class). Second and further classes may take longer to analyse.