The monitoring contract

Read the contract itself very carefully, every page of it. Not that you’re going to be able to change any of the language; it usually is what it is. But you need to know exactly what you’re signing.

Not first. People expect the contract at the beginning and it’s almost never the beginning. What you sign early on is more likely to be release forms, so the program can obtain information about you.

The participation agreement usually doesn’t come until after the evaluation, once recommendations are in place. So the order runs: the first meeting, releases, the evaluation, the recommendation, and then this.

Some form of daily tracking, and everyone’s is a little different. In some programs it’s an app you check into every morning, which then tells you whether you’re testing that day. In others it’s a phone call you place, an automated call you answer, an email, or a number you dial to hear whether your color came up. Whatever the method, the obligation is the same and it’s daily.

Urine screens, usually frequent at the beginning and less frequent as you move through. They’re somewhat random. It doesn’t always seem that way, but they certainly can come at any time.

For some people, a breath alcohol device you blow into at random times of the day, and sometimes at scheduled ones.

Reports, meetings, and the fees. The fees are worth reading twice, because they’re per test and they’re automatic.

Prohibited substances. This is the one that catches people, and it catches them on ordinary things.

You get a cold, you go take some sinus medicine, and the sinus medicine you have always reached for has a prohibited substance in it. The big one is dextromethorphan. Benadryl. Imodium. A lot of these have potential for abuse, and people do manage to abuse over-the-counter medicines.

It catches us because we’re just not used to doing it. You go to the pharmacy and you pick out what you need.

The cold medicine guide goes through this ingredient by ingredient, with the products each one turns up in.

How long yours runs. What yours costs. Which substances yours prohibits and which it merely discourages. What happens if you travel. Whether your board is involved at all.

Those genuinely vary, and the document in front of you is the only one that answers them for you. That’s the argument for reading it slowly even though you can’t negotiate it.

Details, details, details. A contract like this is not one obligation, it’s fifteen or twenty small ones, and almost none of them announce themselves when you miss one. Nobody calls to say a report didn’t arrive.

So sit down with your own contract once, and turn every requirement in it into a line on a checklist: the check-ins, the screens, the reports, the meetings, the continuing education, the fees, the renewals, the documents somebody else is supposed to send in on your behalf. Then run the list monthly, or quarterly at the least.

The reason to do it early is that this bill comes due at the end. What you don’t want, coming up on the finish, is somebody realizing your file has been missing a year of paperwork. Fixing that at month fifty-eight is a very different job from noticing it at month four.

The company that runs the random monitoring can be a separate organization from your health program. That surprises people the first time it matters.

If something is not going correctly, or you get selected for a screen and can’t find anywhere to go and do it, call your contact at your health program.

Most contracts do end. What closing the file involves, and why the six- and three-month marks matter, is on its own page: the end of monitoring guide.