Ask HRC: Notifying Pregnant Women about Routine Drug Testing

​A Healthcare Risk Control (HRC)member recently asked for guidance on whether pregnant patients should be notified via the informed consent process or in some other way that routine drug testing will be performed during the course of their treatment.

In our reply, we noted that obtaining a pregnant patient's consent and informed consent to drug testing implicates ethics, patient safety, risk management, legal, and regulatory issues. ECRI Institute recommends that providers obtain a pregnant patient's informed consent to drug testing. Various factors support this practice. Many of these issues are discussed in the recently issued committee opinion from the American...