Implementation Guidelines - Federal Transit Administration - U.S. ...

define who will receive test results and for
what purposes. Anytime an employer or
service agent releases information to a third
party without the employee’s specific
written consent, the employer or service
agent must immediately notify the employee
in writing of the release.
The release of test results is only one
concern. You must also be sensitive to
employee expectations of confidentiality in
other aspects of a drug and alcohol program.
For example, if it becomes widely known
that an employee has taken a reasonable
suspicion test (even if the test result is
negative), that employee may feel that
his/her privacy has been violated. Likewise,
if referrals to a treatment program for
rehabilitation become a topic of gossip,
employees may lose faith in your program
and become distrustful of management.
Therefore, confidentiality should be applied
to all aspects of your substance abuse
management program, particularly with
respect to identifying specific individuals.
The general guideline is to apply the same
high regard for privacy and confidentiality
that you would want and expect for yourself.
Section 3. REPORTING
FTA requires that transit agencies
prepare annual reports summarizing test
results [§655.72] for each calendar year.
The information is used to monitor the
success of the FTA drug and alcohol testing
program and to determine the annual
random drug and alcohol testing rates for
future years. The standard Management
Information System (MIS) reports that must
be used are contained in 49 CFR Part 655,
Appendix A. The forms can also be
downloaded from FTA’s homepage at
http://transit-safety.volpe.dot.gov/DAMIS.
Previously, all grantees, subrecipients,
and safety-sensitive contractors covered
under the FTA regulations were required to
submit their reports to FTA each year.
However, with the publication of 49 CFR
Part 655, FTA changed the way systems are
to report. Under the new rule, all covered
employers are still required to complete an
annual MIS report, but only those employers
who are randomly selected are required to
submit their reports to FTA.
The sampling procedure used stratifies
the transit agencies into four groupings: top
40 urban, other large urban, small urban, and
rural transit agencies. Safety-sensitive
contractors are included in the grouping for
the transit agency they serve. All of the top
40 transit agencies and their safety-sensitive
contractors are required to report every year
and are not included in the sampling
process. For the remaining agencies, a
sampling method used renders a 95 percent
confidence interval at the +/- 0.5 percent
precision level. As a result, in 2001, 70
large urban, 55 small urban, and 188 rural
agencies were randomly selected. Including
the 40 largest systems, a total of 353 transit
agencies were selected for reporting. When
safety-sensitive contractors were added, a
total of 802 employers were required to
submit MIS reports for calendar year 2001.
Chapter 10. Administrative Requirements 10-9 August 2002