Why Have Us Manage Your Clearinghouse Program?

By: Ashlee Arnold

If you are an FMCSA, DOT-covered company or owner-operator, then you probably already know that you are required to sign up with the Clearinghouse. If you’re an owner-operator, you’re actually required to have a third-party administrator (TPA) manage your Clearinghouse for you. Even if you’re a company, it’s still highly recommended to work with a TPA so that the work of managing your Clearinghouse program can be taken off of your hands.

In this blog, learn more about how working with US Drug Test Centers as your TPA can make your Clearinghouse experience convenient and frictionless.

What’s the Role of the Clearinghouse Database?

The purpose of the FMCSA Drug & Alcohol Clearinghouse is to increase safety for safety-sensitive companies and owner-operators. Prior to the database being created, employers were forced to use paper-driven and manual approaches to gain insight into a driver’s employment over the previous three years. There was no central repository for this very important information. Determining if a driver had any prior violations took a lot of time, money, and resources. Therefore, it was error-prone with a lot of loopholes. For instance, a driver with a violation could simply exclude that employment information during the hiring process when applying to a new company, and the new company would have no way of knowing or verifying that information with the previous employer.

The Clearinghouse provides secure, real-time information related to a driver’s previous drug and/or alcohol violations, making our roads safer than ever before and helping employers avoid dangerous liabilities.

This is why all FMCSA, DOT-covered businesses are required to enroll.

Clearinghouse Management for Owner-operators

Why work with us, especially if you’re a company that can simply manage your Clearinghouse enrollment on your own?

As your TPA, US Drug Test Centers offers unlimited consultations for owner-operators. In addition, your enrollment includes: 

• Required annual driver query

• Required new driver pre-employment query

• Reporting of violations

• Reporting of negative return-to-duty results

• Reporting of the completion of required follow-up testing

• Reporting of employer-determined refusals

These tasks make up much of your workplace drug and alcohol testing program, and US Drug Test Centers does the heavy lifting for you.

Clearinghouse Management for Companies

If you’re a DOT company, you can also expect unlimited consultations, in addition to:

• Policy addendum with updated FMCSA Drug & Alcohol Clearinghouse Rule

• Required annual driver queries

• Required queries of new drivers Reporting of driver violations

• Reporting of negative return-to-duty results for prohibited drivers

• Reporting of the completion of required follow-up testing for prohibited drivers

• Reporting of employer-determined refusals

• Reporting of actual knowledge

If you have a designated employer representative (DER), we will work closely with them to ensure they understand their responsibilities regarding the FMCSA Clearinghouse and how we can help ease the management process—more on that in a moment.

What Types of Professionals are Required to Enroll?

You have a broad idea of who needs to enroll in the Clearinghouse, but who does this apply to, more specifically? The Clearinghouse is designed for all operators of a commercial motor vehicle (CMV) operating in a safety-sensitive position. Here are a few examples:

• School bus drivers

• Construction equipment operators

• Interstate and intrastate motor carriers, including passenger carriers, limousine drivers, and municipal vehicle drivers (e.g., waste management vehicles)

• Federal and state agencies that employ drivers subject to FMCSA drug and alcohol use testing regulations, like the Department of Defense and public transit

If I’m a Company, Can’t My DER Do This?

Enrolling in the Clearinghouse via a TPA isn’t required if you’re a company—you do have the option to let your designated employer representative manage it. However, there are a few important things to keep in mind…

A DER is someone whom an employer selects to manage the company’s drug and alcohol testing program and directly manage the company’s safety-sensitive operators. While you can take this approach, partnering with a TPA ensures that your results are delivered in a timely manner and with the utmost accuracy. A TPA significantly simplifies the process of managing compliance, handling matters like pre-hire and annual queries—and within their required deadlines—reporting drug and alcohol testing violations, reporting refusals or actual knowledge of a safety sensitive driver using an illicit drug or alcohol substance, and making sure the company sticks to regulations. 

As a TPA, we are experts in Clearinghouse enrollment and management, as opposed to a DER who was selected to manage the drug testing program on top of their normal job responsibilities.

The company will still be required to have a DER, but rather than managing the company’s Clearinghouse enrollment, this employee will be the main point of contact that the TPA will communicate with. Also, there will still be some tasks that the TPA can’t manage, so the DER will remain in charge of them. For instance, a DER is needed to report any employer-determined refusals or actual knowledge to the TPA so that the TPA can take the necessary steps to ensure these records are reported in the Clearinghouse database accurately and in a timely manner. 

So, the best approach is to have your DER and a TPA working side by side, rather than treating the DER as a suitable replacement for a TPA.

How to Enroll in the Clearinghouse

US Drug Test Centers makes enrollment easy!

Enroll as a company or opt for owner-operator enrollment to get started in just a few clicks. For both, we offer three membership options—all of which include assistance with enrollment on the Clearinghouse website itself. If you’re not sure which membership is the best fit for you, contact us today and one of our experts will be happy to help find the best enrollment option for your business.

We pride ourselves on providing trustworthy, customized support to meet your unique needs. For many years, we’ve helped businesses of all kinds, sizes, and industries stay drug- and alcohol- free so that employers can continue focusing on what matters: operations and sales.