How Can an Employer Check Whether a Drug Testing Lab Is HHS-Certified?

An employer or service agent can check a laboratory's name and address against the current HHS list of certified laboratories. HHS publishes a notice in the Federal Register each month that lists all HHS-certified laboratories and Instrumented Initial Testing Facilities (IITFs), and SAMHSA posts the same list on its website. The list cited in this answer was published on September 30, 2026, at 91 FR 61854.

The notice states that a laboratory or IITF whose certification is suspended or revoked is omitted from later lists. It also states that laboratories and IITFs in the applicant stage of certification are not to be considered as meeting the minimum requirements. For these reasons the latest list is the one to check, not an older copy.

According to the notice, a laboratory becomes certified after three rounds of performance testing plus an on-site inspection. To keep its certification, it takes part in a quarterly performance testing program and undergoes periodic on-site inspections.

The list separates laboratories from IITFs and groups them by specimen type. Under 49 CFR 40.81(a), a U.S. laboratory is certified for each specimen testing methodology it performs, so a laboratory certified for urine is not, on that basis, certified for oral fluid. The September 30, 2026 notice states that no laboratories were certified at that time to test oral fluid specimens. Which laboratories DOT accepts, including laboratories outside the United States, is covered in Which Laboratories Can Test DOT Drug Specimens?.

The Labs category of the MyDrugTesting.com directory includes pathology, DNA and STD testing laboratories alongside drug testing laboratories.