President Obama's DNA Testing Plan

In a recent article (11/6/09) in the SF Chronicle by Matthew Lee, DNA tests are being considered to be administered to refugees.

President Obama's administration is considering using DNA tests for some foreign refugee applicants following a Bush-era pilot program that found massive fraud among those claiming family links to join relatives already in the United States.
The State Department said Thursday that it and the Homeland Security Department are nearing a decision on ways to reinstate a refugee resettlement program that was suspended last year when the fraud was uncovered.

"These new procedures will likely include DNA testing," the State Department said in a statement given to the Associated Press.

The U.S. experiment using genetic testing ended in 2008 and was aimed only at proving family relationships. The program was not used to identify nationality by country, similar to a controversial effort in England, officials said. Genetic experts have cast doubt on the ability to use DNA results to determine a person's country of origin.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because a decision has not yet been made on reviving or expanding the pilot program.

Although no final decisions have been made, the State Department said it "was close to the end" of a review that had been delayed by the change in administrations. "Now that policy-level people responsible for this issue are in place, we expect to reopen the program with revised procedures in the near future," an official said.
The suspended pilot program, known as Priority 3, allows foreign — almost all of them African — family members of legal U.S. residents to join relatives here.

With little fanfare, the program was halted in March 2008 after DNA testing on applicants in Africa found that up to 87 percent of their familial claims were fraudulent.
The experimental program was conducted in late 2007 and early 2008 on about 3,000 people mostly from Somalia, Ethiopia and Liberia who claimed blood relationships with each other and wanted to be reunited with a family member who had been resettled as a refugee in the U.S.

DNA testing was not done on the alleged relatives in the United States. The State Department said it targeted Africans abroad only for genetic testing because they make up 95 percent of applicants to the program. The testing started, officials said, only after suspicions of fraud arose in applications originating among refugees in Kenya.

"We were ... only able to confirm all claimed biological relationships in fewer than 20 percent of cases," the State Department said in a fact sheet. "In the remaining cases, at least one negative result was identified or the individuals refused to be tested."

The fact sheet was originally released last year in the waning weeks of the Bush administration but was reissued shortly after President Barack Obama took office.
The idea of such testing on refugees came into the spotlight again this week when

British authorities said they were using genetic tests on some African asylum-seekers in an effort to catch those who are lying about their nationality. That move has drawn criticism from scientists and provoked outrage from rights groups.

As the U.S. review winds down, questions were raised about what to do with the estimated 36,000 African refugees who arrived in the United States under the resettlement between 2003 and its suspension.

The Homeland Security Department has jurisdiction to determine if any of those applications were fraudulent but department officials said Thursday they had no plans to check those already in the United States. Such a move would likely draw opposition from civil rights groups.

Officials said Homeland Security does not have a specific DNA testing program in place in the United States. But one official said it has always asked for a DNA submission if an applicant does not have evidence that proves there is a family relationship.
Read more: San Francisco Chronicle
John Lipp is in touch with DNA Solutions and will work with them to keep us in the loop if something develops on this front.
In the meantime, keep this in mind and your antennas up for similar opportunities like this.

Innovation and Initiative

From The London Times:

A Well-Planned Retirement

Outside England 's Bristol Zoo there is a parking lot for 150 cars and 8 buses. For 25 years, its parking fees were managed by a very pleasant attendant. The fees were £1 for cars ($1.40), £5 for buses (about $7).

Then, one day, after 25 solid years of never missing a day of work, he just didn't show up; so the Zoo Management called the City Council and asked it to send them another parking agent.

The Council did some research and replied that the parking lot was the Zoo's own responsibility.

The Zoo advised the Council that the attendant was a City employee.

The City Council responded that the lot attendant had never been on the City pay role.

Meanwhile, sitting in his villa somewhere on the coast of Spain (or some such scenario), is a man who'd apparently had a ticket machine installed completely on his own; and then had simply begun to show up every day, commencing to collect and keep the parking fees, estimated at about $560 per day -- for 25 years.

Assuming 7 days a week, this amounts to just over $7 million dollars!

And no one even knows his name.

Now that is the definition of innovation and initiative.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving Day and Dinner.

Lemons to Lemonade

The following is an email I received from Doug in Lancaster.

I wanted to share with you something that transpired over the last 24 hours.
I received a call from a woman who identified herself as being from the DOT. She asked for information on one of my clients, a trucking company in our DOT Consortium. I got very uncomfortable, and I told her that Gloria, who had all of this information, was out to lunch and asked her to call back after 1:00pm.

Meanwhile, I called John Lipp and Tony Waters and shared with them what happened. Tony suggested I send the information to the company, rather than the woman, not knowing if she really was from the DOT.

In any case, the DOT Auditor called back. I told her that I was uncomfortable sharing client information over the phone and suggested that I send it to the company. She acknowledged my concern and told me that she would e-mail me the information she needed about the company’s DOT program.

After receiving the email and verifying that she really was from the DOT, I put the information requested together, (we had everything she requested) and faxed it to the company. I called the trucking company today, and they told us everything we sent them answered all the auditor’s questions, and the issues had to do with their trucking company testing program, not AccuDiagnostics. They were very appreciative for the quick response and that all of the information I sent was complete, professional and in good order.

Because of that, the trucking company now wants us to do Supervisor Training and they are going to recommend us to one of their friends who is starting their own trucking company.

But wait! There’s more…

I made copies of the e-mail I had had received from the DOT auditor and distributed this to several my DOT type of clients and prospects I’ve been working with. I positioned the email copies as a ‘DOT Alert’ – the “DOT Auditors” are in the Antelope Valley and shared what the DOT may look for if they should select their company for an audit.

But Wait!!!! There’s more……

The phone started ringing immediately. In just one afternoon, I got three commitments for Supervisor Training, as well as one company that is switching from their current drug testing company to AccuDiagnostics. I had tried to get them as a client for more than a year with no success. Now they also want us to do a new Drug-Free Workplace Policy, Supervisor Training, as well as their random testing and pre-employment testing.

The call from the DOT Auditor turned out to be a great opportunity to get in front of my prospects again, create a lot of credibility, and trump my competitors.

Doug wins the Innovation Award for the Week.

Moral of the Story: In every problem there is an opportunity.

No Blog Posting on Friday

Blog posting are made Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. However, due to the Thanksgiving Holiday, there will be no blog posting on Friday, November 27th.

Have a meaningful and enjoyable Thanksgiving while enjoying time with your family while humbly acknowledging how blessed we all are to live in a land where that afford us so much at a time when much of the world has very little.

Testimonial Letters

In one of my recent blog posting, I shared an experience that Doug Kimball in Lancaster had with one of his clients passing a CHP audit because they had recently participated in Doug's Supervisor Drug Testing Training.

When you have a client that has had a positive experience with you, one of your staff or lab technicians or other interactions, it is a good idea to take this opportunity to ask for testimonial letter so you can post this in your office or use it for recruiting new clients by putting these in your sales presentation binder.

When Change is Good

This past month the AccuDiagnostics world changed significantly. After the initial shock of having the entire identify of our business change overnight, the realization of what this means and how this change is going to be implemented began to sink in.

Most of us have been through change before. Whether personal, career or business change, we have been through significant upheavals and reorientation in our lives.

People much wiser than me have counseled that it is not so much what happens to us but on how we hand what happens to us that differentiates success and failure.

A few months ago I watched the movie “The Miracle Worker” starring Patty Duke and subsequently listened to Patty Duke address the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, CA. She discussed what was a potentially devastating handicap eventually turned into a motivator that propelled Helen Keller to become an inspirational icon for all handicapped individuals for current, past and generations yet to be born. It was not her handicap that made the difference for Helen Keller but how she handled this handicap that made the difference.

What each of us do with the new brand is going to make the difference between having this propel us forward or be an anchor retarding our success.

Here are three tactics that you might consider in filling up your half full glass:

1. A PR announcement circulated to the all local media.
2. Contacting each customer and telling them the exciting news of our name change with unbridled enthusiasm.
3. Working hard to implement the transition plan that Greenville will present in the coming weeks.

Years from now we will look back and see the benefits of how the new brand has positioned the ARCpoint to be the dominate brand in our market segment.

Past With Flying Colors

Doug Kimball reports that he recently got a call from one of his school bus clients.

The HR Director was calling to scheudule their fourth quarter random drug tests for their drivers. During the conversation, the HR Supervisor shared with Doug that their office had just been audited by the CHP with the BIT Program.

The HR Director was very pleased to announce that had passed the audit with flying colors. Everything was in order, including their random testing program and documentation. The CHP had even checked their Supervisor Training certifications, which she had on file (which is one of the areas that is most companies overlook).

Fortunately, Doug held a training class for the company a few months ago and before he left he made sure they had everything in place.

The HR Director was very appreciative of the training and our service, and of course, Doug said he felt great about having a happy client that now understands what could have happened without his training!

MRO Addresses CAMPA

Dr. Christopher Rubel hosted a conference call to discuss the MRO process and answer questions regarding drug test reviews by an RMO and unusual situations that tend to arise from time to time. There were several issues that were clarified such as:

1. Medical marijuana. If a person tests positive, whether or not they have a medical marijuana prescription or not, it will be reported as a positive test.

2. In the federal law, Marijuana is a Schedule 1 drug, the same classification as heroin.

3. If a person has a prescription for Marinol and tests positive, the test is reported as negative.

4. The regulations do not require an MRO to speak different languages. It is the responsibility of the employer to provide translation services through their DER.

5. If a drug test is going to result in the termination of an employee, Dr. Rubel recommends strongly to have a MRO review as a standard operating procedure because where a person on a prescription medication resulted in a positive drug test which resulted in termination. This will protect your business in the event of litigation.

Note: We have heard from Greenville that a few locations are behind in their MRO payments. Please remember this service is a great benefit and we do not want to jeopardize our relationship with Dr. Rubel.
Please come up to date on your MRO payments.

The next ongoing training session for CAMPA will be held on November 17th at 8:00 am. This session will be a sales meeting.

H1N1 and Your Business

From various sources and from my health care provider, I have learned what business owners need to be concerned about with the H1N1 issue and how it impacts their business.

The H1N1 virus can only enter your body through the nostrils and mouth/throat. In a global epidemic of this nature, it's almost impossible not coming into contact with H1N1 in spite of all precautions.

While you are still healthy and not showing any symptoms of H1N1 infection, in order to prevent proliferation, aggravation of symptoms and development of secondary infections, some very simple steps, not always fully highlighted in most official communications, can be practiced (instead of focusing on stocking up on Tamiflu):

1. Frequent hand-washing (well highlighted in all official communications).

2. "Hands-off-the-face" approach. Resist all temptations to touch any part of face (unless eating, bathing, etc.).

3. Gargle twice a day with warm salt water (use Listerine if you don't trust salt). H1N1 takes 2-3 days after initial infection in the throat/nasal cavity to proliferate and show characteristic symptoms. Simple gargling prevents proliferation. In a way, gargling with salt water has the same effect on a healthy individual that Tamiflu has on an infected one. Don't underestimate this simple, inexpensive and powerful preventative method.


4. Similar to 3 above, clean your nostrils at least once every day with warm salt water. Not everybody may be good at using a Neti pot, but blowing the nose hard once a day and swabbing both nostrils with
cotton swabs dipped in warm salt water is very effective in bringing down the viral population.

5. Drink as much of warm liquids (tea, coffee, etc) as you can. Drinking warm liquids has the same effect as gargling, but in the reverse direction. They wash off proliferating viruses from the throat
into the stomach where they cannot survive, proliferate or do harm.

6. If your child under 5 years develops a fever, contract his or her pediatrician. Young children are at a higher risk of developing complications from H1N1.

7. If you are experiencing difficulty in breathing, shortness of breath, pain or pressure in the chest or abdomen, sudden dizziness, confusion, or serve or persistent vomiting either go to the emergency room or call 911. First responders cannot test for H1N1 or administer the H1N1 vaccine, but they can treat you for symptoms of H1N1. The majority of H1N1 cases are not medical emergencies, and most people will recover on their own.

8. When the vaccine is available get vaccinated against the seasonal flu AND H1N1. These are two different vaccines.
9. Avoid visiting a loved one in the hospital if you are experiencing flu-like symptoms.

10. When you experiencing flu-like symptoms, do not go to work. Stay home, rest and take care of the symptoms so you can get back to work as soon as possible. Do not infect everyone else in the workplace and shut down the business completely.

It is likely that you and or your staff will get the flu at some point during this flu season. It is best to plan on how to manage this situation now by implementing some of the precautions listed above and developing a plan on what you are going to do when someone in your office gets sick.

Medical Marijuana and the DOT

The Office of Drug and Alcohol Policy Compliance of the U.S. Department of Transportation (“DOT”) has reminded the regulated public that the use of “medical marijuana” pursuant to certain state laws does not excuse a transportation employee’s positive drug test result, despite a Government decision to relax federal prosecutions for such use.
The DOT, through its “modal” agencies, regulates truck and bus drivers, railroad employees, airline employees, transit system workers, and pipeline and hazardous material workers, and certain workers on navigable waters.
In guidelines issued on October 19, 2009, to federal prosecutors in states that have enacted “medical marijuana” laws, the Department of Justice said that the prosecution of seriously-ill individuals who use “medical marijuana” pursuant to valid prescriptions and their caregivers “is unlikely to be an efficient use of limited federal resources.” Visit Justice.gov for full document

Responding to inquiries resulting from the Justice Department’s action, DOT announced October 22, 2009, “[T]he DOJ guidelines will have no bearing on the Department of Transportation’s regulated drug testing program. We will not change our regulated drug testing program based upon these guidelines to Federal prosecutors.”
The use of “medical marijuana” under a state law is not a valid medical explanation for a transportation employee’s positive test result, according to DOT drug testing regulations. The Department’s regulations specifically prohibit Medical Review Officers from verifying a drug test as negative based upon information that a physician recommended or prescribed “medical marijuana” to the employee. It therefore “remains unacceptable for any safety-sensitive employee subject to drug testing under the Department of Transportation’s drug testing regulations to use marijuana.”
States that have decriminalized the use of “medical marijuana” in certain circumstances include Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington. Federal law, however, continues to list the drug as illegal.

Pay Per Click Advertising on Bing

Weeks ago we took the opportunity to enhance our paid advertising by creating a pay per click advertising campaign on Bing, Microsoft’s new search engine.


At this time Bing is working very hard to become strong competition for Google, so we wanted to try our luck with advertising here.


Bing’s pay per click advertising is called Adcenter. We used our Las Vegas location as our test and mirrored our Google Adwords campaign.


The results we are seeing from Adcenter are a small fraction of the results we receive from Google Adwords. If our campaigns are structured the same and customers are seeing the same thing, why aren’t we seeing the traffic that we do with Adwords?


We are paying about the same per click and we are maintaining the same position. Here are a few differences that are causing us to not see the same numbers we get with our Google Adwords Accounts.


1. Adcenter is very selective on who they display ads to. Adcenter claims they know how to select the correct demographic for our ads, and this provides us with higher quality clicks than other pay per click accounts. This is of course a claim and there is no way of telling if this is true at this point or not.


2. The structure of our ads had to be changed in most cases due to very strict standards of Adcenter. This includes certain keywords we use throughout our ads, as well as the use of our phone numbers in the display ads.


3. Adcenter is not as flexible as Adwords when it comes to bidding options; they make it very difficult to run a large campaign on a small budget.


4. And most importantly, we aren’t seeing the same traffic we do from Adwords because Bing does not receive nearly as much traffic as Google does. Yet!


Because Bing is so new they are constantly upgrading their programs. We will see many changes in this campaign in the coming months that will be to our benefit.

The WC Insurance Agent/Broker Market

Doug in Lancaster Reports the Following:

I had a very good conversation with an insurance broker today, who ended up adding me to his referral list and giving me the contact info for a local school district, and others, for drug testing.

After walking into the office and introducing myself, I asked the receptionist if they did Worker’s Compensation Insurance. Since the answer was “Yes”, I asked if there was an agent or broker available that I could speak with. In this case, the owner/broker came out and invited me into his office.

I asked him if he was familiar with the California rules regarding denying a claim if the employee was found to be under the influence of alcohol or drugs at the time of the injury or accident. It was clear that he wasn’t very knowledgeable about this area. Using the information from the National Convention in Greenville, I reviewed the information from Bill Judge’s presentation on this topic, including the NCCI stats that 38% to 50% of all claims involve the use of alcohol/drugs.
I explained the reason I do a significant amount of work with insurance agents providing them tools for them to help their clients reduce their Worker’s Compensation Premiums.

Further discussion revolved around how to provide ‘value-added’ information to his clients and future client prospects on how they might be able to challenge Worker’s Compensation claims, and save themselves a great deal of money; but only if they had a drug-free workplace policy in place and followed it. If they were interested, I was there to provide a policy and/or testing, as well as any further information required.

The end result was that this broker bought into the concept and was eager to put me on his referral list. He also said he would talk to one of his bigger clients, (with some 300 employees) about this, and he shared with me information on additional contacts.

Several of these brokers could make a substantial impact on my business!

Knowledge is power. Doug has taken a bit of knowledge and put to work in a creative way.

Let’s give Doug a “high five” on being innovative and sharing this information with the team.

Mystery Shoppers on the Prowl

As reported by Jeff and Doug:

If you recently received a fax from Quest about their new Preferred Partner program, they mentioned a ‘secret shopper’ as part of this…….

Recently, both Lancaster and Sacramento recently were shopped by a Quest secret shopper. The person who came in for a Drug Test was dressed as a trucker and requested a DOT Pre-employment drug test. In Lancaster, Gloria did the collection. In Sacramento, Jeff was manning the ship with Carol attending the National Conference. Both locations passed their secret shopping experience with flying colors, doing everything perfectly!

The person taking the test in each case identified himself as working for Quest. Each location was measured on an evaluation form receiving a high rating meeting all of the standards and procedures Quest expects of their Preferred Collection sites.

So this is a ‘heads-up’ for everyone, if they haven’t visited you yet.

Good Luck!