The Medical Review Officer (MRO) is a licensed physician specializing in drug abuse issues, contracted to review laboratory findings and determine whether a specimen donor has passed or failed their drug test. The MRO receives only positive test results from the lab. Upon receipt of these results, the MRO contacts the donor by phone to request copies of prescriptions for any medications they are currently taking or have recently taken and inquire about any non-prescription medications recently consumed. Based on this conversation and review, the MRO makes the final pass/fail decision regarding the donor’s test outcome. The MRO used by Insight charges a modest fee of approximately $25 for each specimen reviewed regardless of the number of drugs that are involved.
The donor can obtain these copies of prescriptions either from their pharmacy or their prescribing doctor. The MRO will then compare these prescriptions with the certified lab results and then decide whether the drug test was passed or failed. The MRO decision is then signed and electronically sent to the employer along with the signed lab test result. This MRO document is to be retained by the employer and will be accepted as valid admissible document when presented in a legal process.
Liability:
All determinations of a positive test result are first made by the certified laboratory, with the result report signed by the certifying scientist. The final decision is made by the MRO, who bears all liability for confirming a “positive” result. The facility and its staff, along with Insight Drug Abuse Testing, hold no liability in this process. The only responsibility of the facility staff is to identify which specimens are negative and which should be sent to the lab for further testing.