SAFETY LANE has certified medical examiners to do CDL physicals!!

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owner of Chiropractic Lane (www.chiropractic-lane.com) and Safety Lane (www.safety-lane.com)
290 Ferry Street
Suite A1
Newark, NJ 07105
Office:  973-344-5656
Fax 973-344-5633


Those who hold a commercial driver’s license are looking at a big and serious change in the license that has already started but will become law on May 21. 2014: to get the required physical exam, you must go to a certified medical examiner (CME).


This means, as of today (July 9, 2013) that the number of doctors and other medical professionals who can do this physical exam (roughly counting all the MDs, DOs, DCs, PA, NPs) has gone from about 100,000 to 600.  By the time the law becomes completely followed, this may be as many as 1,000.

Yes, 1000 medical professionals can do this exam and only these people.

The list of all medical professionals with this designation can be found at https://nationalregistry.fmcsa.dot.gov/NRPublicUI/home.seam

I have this designation,  National Registry # 9221125725.

Getting this certification is not a simple matter of asking for it. This was not an easy designation to get at all: it took a six-part course, recognition of the course, some money and then a 120-question exam in 120 minutes.  The questions challenged your professional knowledge against your clinical knowledge.

The changes are very clear: this is an examination of the driver that is making everyone responsible for the driver’s health.  Gone are the days when the driver’s could seek out the doctors who will pass everyone with a 2-year certificate with very little actual testing of the driver’s health.

For example: let’s say that the driver has hypertension (high blood pressure) and he wants to hide it.  He takes some blood pressure pills, gets tested and is found within a normal range (normotensive).  Everything else checks out within normal limits and he gets a 2-year certificate.  A few months later he is driving and his high blood pressure causes him to experience tachycardia or burst a blood vessel in his eye or one of the other side-effects of this condition.  There is an accident and damage occurs.

In the pre-CME days: nothing would be done to anyone, the driver for lying, the doctor for doing a bad job of doing the exam.

Now, if the exam is done by a CME, the driver is required to sign a document during the exam that he has told his complete history and has not withheld any information.

In the same scenario noted above, there are two possible outcomes

If the driver lied and this high blood pressure caused damage to occur he will be held responsible and he will lose his CDL license and probably his means of making a living, as well as face possible criminal charges. I have no idea how long he will lose his license for.

If the driver told the truth about this hypertension and the doctor did not verify whether the patient was compliant with his regimen and medications and even ignored it by giving the driver a 2-year certificate (a medication-controlled hypertensive can get no more than a one-year certificate) then the doctor will lose his certificate as a CME and possibly face criminal charges.

All the results of every physical a CME does gets sent up to a central government database within 24 hours of the physical exam.

I look forward to doing these tests in my office.  I think this is a wonderful change in my practice!

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