Jan 19, 2021
The seven-month outage of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s National Registry of Certified Medical Examiners in late 2017 and half of 2018 has limited the agency s ability to properly oversee its medical certificate program due to missing driver records and outdated medical examiner credentials, according to the U.S. DOT’s Office of Inspector General, who this month released the results of an audit of the program.
Without proper oversight, OIG says FMCSA could be missing medical certificate fraud indicators or other risks, and has less assurance that drivers are physically qualified to drive a commercial vehicle. Without fully implementing its requirements for monitoring medical examiner eligibility and performance, including a representative sample of driver examinations, FMCSA may be missing fraud indicators or other risks that may require mitigation, OIG says.
FMCSA: Med examiners can conduct DOT physicals for drivers with expired CDLs
A notice issued Wednesday from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration alerted medical examiners that they are authorized to conduct DOT physicals on drivers whose CDLs have expired but are still operating legally under the COVID-19 emergency declarations.
The notice from the National Registry of Certified Medical Examiners states that “certified [medical examiners] listed on the National Registry are authorized to conduct examinations of, and issue [medical examiner’s certificates] to, any driver that meets the physical qualification standards regardless of whether or not they have a current expired or unexpired driver’s license.”