Posted on Oct 4, 2019
Can the V.A. drug test you without your knowledge?
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I got drug tested and didn't know it until I looked at my lab results online. They tested me for seven different drugs, even though I've never had a drug problem.
Posted 5 y ago
Responses: 8
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The VA, and many hospitals, can drug test people for many different reasons:
A drug test can be used to evaluate someone for different causes of symptoms, it can be used to evaluate people for compliance with pain management agreements, it can be used to monitor for risk of diversion or abuse of drugs, it can be used to evaluate someone for potentially harmful and life threatening interactions before ordering procedures or new medications, and many other legitimate medical reasons. Changes are pretty high that they did a drug test because it's a required checkbox in a long flow-sheet of required tests before they could order or do something else and to rule out everything before proceeding, and changes are pretty low that they did a drug test because someone looked at you and thought "that dude is on drugs".
It is important to point out that a "medical" drug test is not a "legal" drug test. There is no chain-of-custody with a medical drug test because there (usually) is no legal drawback if you end up with a positive drug test from one of them. They are only used to assist with medical decision making, nothing else.
A drug test can be used to evaluate someone for different causes of symptoms, it can be used to evaluate people for compliance with pain management agreements, it can be used to monitor for risk of diversion or abuse of drugs, it can be used to evaluate someone for potentially harmful and life threatening interactions before ordering procedures or new medications, and many other legitimate medical reasons. Changes are pretty high that they did a drug test because it's a required checkbox in a long flow-sheet of required tests before they could order or do something else and to rule out everything before proceeding, and changes are pretty low that they did a drug test because someone looked at you and thought "that dude is on drugs".
It is important to point out that a "medical" drug test is not a "legal" drug test. There is no chain-of-custody with a medical drug test because there (usually) is no legal drawback if you end up with a positive drug test from one of them. They are only used to assist with medical decision making, nothing else.
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SFC Joseph Tidwell
Thanks for clearing that up. I still think he should have told me he intended on doing one instead of me thinking it was for a renal problem. I'll never trust him again.
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Many hospitals (including VA facilities) routinely run drug panels with any blood draw they do. It is only used to help diagnose symptoms as presented. I also helps avoid medication interaction complications. Certain medications CAN NOT be mixed with other meds or street drugs. I doubt the results would stand up in court as any 1st year law student would be able to get the results tossed due to violation of Chain-of Custody, warrantless search, etc, etc, etc.
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