Attention All Certified Medical Examiners (CMEs).   May 21, 2014 is just around the corner and on that date you will be required to complete and submit all Driver Medical Examination Forms for the previous month using the online MCSA-5850 form available through your National Registry account.   If you did not complete any DOT medical examinations the previous month, you must still report that no examinations were performed.   The MCSA-5850 will be the only way to submit your driver medical examination results starting May 21, 2014.  The FMCSA will not accept submissions by any other means, including fax, email, facebook, instagram or pinterest.    However, you need not wait until May 21, 2014 to start submitting your results.  After you have passed your National Registry Certification Examination you may start to do so.  This will afford you the opportunity to get used to the software and database of the MCSA-5850.   Once you log into your National Registry account you may begin entering driver information on the online MCSA-5850.  Please note, if you don’t enter certain fields, some other fields will not show up.  For example if you don’t select qualified, the driver medical examiner ‘s certificate expiration date will not show up, and neither will the variances and restrictions fields.  Please note that it may be difficult to enter  exact dates for the expiration date since February of 2016 is a leap year.  I am not sure if they fixed this yet on the website but I will check next time I enter driver information.  If anyone out there already knows please let me know.  For more information on this “glitch” in the system check “DOT Physical Exams and the Leap Year Blues”.

While entering all this information into the MCSA-5850 don’t freak out if you made a mistake, because your secretary started to tell you about the one day sale at Macy’s or you forgot to enter that the driver needs corrective lenses.  Yes, as of now you will have to resubmit an entire new form (MCSA-5850 is short anyway ) and click the box that says “update previous exam”.

A point of confusion, and I have gotten and email or two about this.  Apparently some examiners got confused about a previous blog post that talked about the FMCSA’s Notice of Proposed Rule Making (NPRM), for submission of exam results by the end of the business day.  As I explained to that individual, this particular post, “2014 Brings Changes For truck Drivers….” discussed a NPRM for submitting CDL/CLP driver information only.  It does not apply to non-CDL drivers.  The post also discussed the proposed new Medical Examination Report Form (MERF) and new Medical Examiner’s Certificate (MEC).  Please note that this is only a Notice of Proposed Rule Making.  See the questions an answers below for more detail.  In the mean time continue to use the current MERF.  However, you may use the new MEC that has the  additional fields for National Registry Number and Driver type (i.e CDL yes or no boxes, and Intrastate yes or no boxes).

Question:  I am in PA and your blog has been helpful however I am unable to locate where in the regulations it is stated that by 5/21 all certified medical examiners must report exam results daily as you stated in your 1/6/2014 blog, “2014 Brings Changes…et al.”….according to Part 391.43 g (3)….it states that medical providers are required to electronically report this data “once per calendar month” starting 5/21/14. This is directly from the FMCSA.DOT.GOV website. Can you please share why you interpret that as daily reporting? Thank you.

Answer:  Thanks for the question,
This was written in response to a NPR (Notice of Proposed Rulemaking) by the FMCSA. It only would apply to CDL and CLP holders and would happen once the Medical Examiner’s Certificate (MEC) information is integrated with the SDLA. However, there was a delay of 1 year to Jan 30, 2015, since a lot of the states were not ready. Once all the states are ready to enter the medical certification information (from the MEC) of CDL and CLP holders electronically (The FMCSA proposes to transmit that information from the MCSA-5850 to the SDLA), then these commercial licensed drivers would not have to carry their MEC with them after 15 days (presumably to allow the States enough time to enter the information). Local, state and federal authorities would then have more “real time” access to CDL and CLP holders medical certification information. This will not apply to non-CDL or non-CLP holders who are coming in for a physical. See link http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2013-05-10/pdf/2013-11080.pdf