T-L Photos/GAGE VOTA Probation Officer for Belmont County Northern Division Court Chad Moore wagers his paycheck on the accuracy of the The Thermo Fisher Scientific Indiko Plus Clinical Analyzer

ST. CLAIRSVILLE — The Belmont County Divisional Courthouse has a new state-of-the-art drug testing machine.

The Thermo Fisher Scientific Indiko Plus Clinical Analyzer will now allow the courts to receive the most accurate drug testing results they’ve ever had. Its purchase was made possible from a $100,000 Adult Probation Grant called the Tax Credit Assistance Program. Roughly $22,000 of the $100,000 grant went to purchasing the machine, startup kits, training and testing room materials.

Chad Moore, probation officer for Belmont County Northern Division Court, said that he would bet his entire paycheck on the accuracy of every test the new machine does.

The new machine was installed Aug. 19 and up until then, the courts used urine cup tests that were very accurate.

But the updated tests provide results believed to be the most accurate available. Moore said that if someone on probation tests positive for drugs or alcohol, they do have the ability to dispute the test at a $42 charge. In his experience, though, once the offenders realize that it’s an additional fee they usually admit to using the drugs or alcohol.

“As of right now I have had zero challenges,” Moore said. “I’d rather you just come here and admit that you screwed up and we can go from there instead of denying it and disputing the results, because then you’re going to have to pay the $42 and the second test is going to come back with the same results.”

On Thursday afternoon, Moore and Belmont County Eastern Division Court Probation Officer Andrea Gatti gave a demonstration of how they use the new machine to several probation officers and Common Pleas Judge John Vavra.

“Every morning I come in and run the controls on the machine and make sure everything is lining up. Every night we put the reagents into the fridge, so when I come in I put them back in here,” Moore said.

The reagents are what gets mixed into the urine to get the sample that will identify if the person has tested positive for anything that Moore would be testing for. He added that the daily morning routine of running the controls and confirming that all of the levels are correct is about a 30-minute process.

After Moore gave a brief explanation of his daily routine, Gatti started the demonstration at the urine testing bathroom. Once Gatti receives the urine, she takes it to the room where the machine is located. Once in the room she gets a small rack that fits multiple sample tubes.

She then goes to the computer that uses Paracelsus, which is a web toxicology data management tool that has all of the names of the individuals needing to be tested. Gatti selects the name of the person’s urine she will be testing and prints out a barcode to place on the sample tube. When scanned, the barcode takes her to the person who’s being tested on the Paracelsus site.

“When Andrea comes over she’ll take the pee and put it into the tube. Usually we’ll only get it up to the first line so it’s just enough to sample,” Moore said.

After completing those steps, the urine sample will be placed into the machine and they lock the machine until the test is complete.

Moore said the machine can test for a 25-item panel, although the probation officers rarely test for all 25 items every single test.

“If somebody’s an alcoholic, I’ll test them for alcohol every time. But if somebody’s on a script for suboxone, I’m not going to worry about that every time. I might throw that in there once in a while just to make sure that they are taking their script,” Moore said.

He added that the test takes about 10 minutes to complete, and once it is completed the probation officer administering the test can receive an email notifying them if the person tested positive or negative for every item tested for instantly. He said that he prefers to only receive emails notifying him if somebody tests positive because that way if he doesn’t receive an email that means that the individual passed the test.