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Historically low unemployment rates and increasing marijuana use has led some employers in states where recreational cannabis is legal to drop their zero-tolerance policies.[CR-LF][CR-LF]But not everyone is ready to make the leap.[CR-LF][CR-LF]As Illinois readies for recreational marijuana to become legal on Jan. 1, employers here are being told to consider how a zero-tolerance policy may affect their ability to recruit workers.[CR-LF][CR-LF]“Unemployment is so low that employers cannot insist on a zero-tolerance policy,” said Curtis Graves, staff attorney for the Denver-based Employers Council not-for-profit. The council has surveyed Colorado employers every other year since 2014 when recreational use of cannabis was legalized in the state.[CR-LF]Marijuana positivity increased by 75% from 2013 to 2016 in the general U.S. workforce, according to the Quest Diagnostics Drug Testing Index. Nearly 9% tested positive in 2016, according to Quest.

Q&A with David Freeman. Most people I talk to in pharma and biotech know that Quest Diagnostics is a leader in laboratory diagnostic services. What they often don’t know is the depth of the company's experience and capabilities in data, analytics and services across the development continuum. Beyond having over 48 billion clinical lab results in its database, Quest has 2,250 patient service centers, increasingly in retail locations, 20,000 mobile care professionals seeing patients in workplaces and the home. Quest provides services to half the country’s hospitals and physicians roughly a third of the adult U.S. population every year. The Clinical Insights portfolio started in 2015 with dialogue between Quest data scientists and medical directors with researchers in pharma who were trying to understand large patterns in disease progression, diagnosis and treatment. Those dialogues, which continue to this day, produce rich insights and customized at-scale data sets and analysis used for research and the planning of new therapeutic launches.

Op-ed: Is blockchain the technology that’s going to fix healthcare’s many problems? Potentially. But not now. Not even close. Before we can fix healthcare with blockchain, we need to break down the barriers that are preventing blockchain from fixing healthcare. The Synaptic Health Alliance pilot has been a cue about blockchain’s future in healthcare. Led by healthcare giants Aetna, Ascension, Humana, MultiPlan, Optum, UnitedHealthcare, and Quest Diagnostics, the program plans to use blockchain to reduce administrative costs and improve data quality. Early this year, other big-time players — Aetna, Anthem, Health Care Service Corporation (HCSC), PNC Bank, and IBM — announced a new collaborative that will leverage blockchain technology to enhance interoperability and transparency in healthcare. Many smaller partnerships continue to follow suit. However, it doesn't pay to be a guinea pig.

Hc1's software employs machine learning to prevent health systems from ordering too many or too few tests, a mistake that can lead to missed diagnoses and costly procedures.

According to a new analysis by Quest Diagnostics, one-third of U.S. industry sectors experienced year-over-year double-digit increases in workforce drug positivity between 2015 and 2018, with marijuana as the most commonly detected drug. The Quest Diagnostics Drug Testing Index is an analysis of more than 14 million urine drug tests of the general U.S. workforce in 17 different sectors.