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Random “smokerlyzer” and other testing coming for state employees

Post on April 27, 2009 by 3 Comments »

On WUNC TV’s Legislative Week in Review yesterday, State Health Plan Director Jack Walker started to describe his plans for random testing to find smokers and overweight people on the state health plan. No other state in the country is treating state employees in this way. For a better way to reduce smoking and encourage healthier habits in the state health plan see the NC Health Access Coalition’s recent report.

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Comments (Closed):3

  1. Adam Linker
    April 27, 2009 at 4:25 pm

    As someone in our last State Health Plan post noted — a breathalyzer test will not detect nicotine, as Walker says in the video. Instead, the SHP will have to combine Smokerlyzer tests for carbon monoxide with random blood tests.

  2. Aftercancer
    April 27, 2009 at 4:54 pm

    I expect litigation will be filed once this health plan goes into effect. In the meantime I am advising colleagues to have no weight or smoking information in their medical record and inform their physician that they should not be used in coding for billing purposes either. I think once physicians start having to deal with this there may be some changes.

  3. The Peter Pyramid
    April 28, 2009 at 11:33 am

    makes me want re-read the classic book about organization ineptitude “Malice in Blunderland”