QUICK DRUG TESTS AID JOB HOPEFULS AND EMPLOYERS

St. Vincent, partner in eScreen project, conducts the exams in central Indiana.

A new drug screening device is allowing local companies to hire employees
almost in the time it takes to go to the bathroom.

The contraption, which looks like a coffee maker, reads negative drug
results in minutes.

The fast turnaround means businesses don't have to wait days for lab
results before putting new employees to work.

Nearly 700 central Indiana companies now use the test kit, which they say
has helped speed up the hiring process immensely.

"Usually, when we do a drug screen, we are at the point of making an
offer," said Jennifer Veatch, assistant manager of human resources at
MicroDyne Outsourcing in Indianapolis, a computer systems troubleshooter.

Veatch said job candidates have been known to take another job while
waiting for test results to come back. "We don't want them out there
wandering around for three or four days," Veatch said.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the eScreen Drugs of Abuse
Screening System, made by an Overland Park, Kan., company, in April 2001.

St. Vincent Hospital, which helped develop the eScreen technology, has the
exclusive contract to conduct the test at five clinics in central Indiana.

The customary way of gathering urine samples was to ship them from
collection clinics to testing laboratories. The labs would fax the employer
results in about 72 hours, then mail the verification.

The eScreen, which costs about the same as a laboratory test -- $20 to $40
- -- has an FDA urinalysis test strip attached to the cover of a urine cup.

A syringe transfers the needed sample to the strips and a computer
calculates whether cocaine, marijuana, opiates, PCPs or amphetamines are
present.

Negative readings are usually finished in two to eight minutes. The
employer can log on to a secure Web address moments later and view the results.

Inconclusive results still need to be sent to a lab and the delay there is
the same as it used to be. But businesses note that 95 percent of the
estimated 50 million yearly drug tests in the country are negative.

Johnna Guinty, eScreen's communications director, said the company's device
is used in 500 clinics across the nation. By having a computer read the
results rather than a person, the possibility of human error is eliminated,
the company notes.

St. Vincent Hospital officials say central Indiana businesses have been
eager to sign up, sending in 1,600 job candidates a month.

"This has proven to be extremely valuable to employers. It has changed the
expectation for drug test results," said Dr. Robin Stickney, director of
occupational health services at St. Vincent.

One of the largest clients is Wal-Mart, which tests 750,000 potential
employees a year across the country. Mary Jones, personnel manager of 520
employees at the Wal-Mart on East Washington Street, said she sends two to
four job candidates to be screened a week.

"We have a really high turnover," she said. "This way I can send them to be
tested one day and start training them the next."

Job candidates, she said, "keep looking for jobs if they have to wait three
days for the tests to come along."

"And when the economy is bad, like it is, they will take the first job that
puts them to work," she said.

Karen Young, 46, of Indianapolis, applied for a job at Wal-Mart and took
the test last Thursday.

She said it was important for her to get the results back quickly because
she had already been offered another job and had to decide quickly which
one to accept.

"I'd rather work at Wal-Mart," she said.

She knows the frustration of waiting for results. Four years ago, when she
applied for a job in New York City, she waited a week for her drug-screen
results to come back.

"I basically had to sit and wait for them to call," Young said. 'I kept
looking."