FMCSA seeks up to 780K driver exams from 2017 National Registry shutdown

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is issuing a deadline for certified medical examiners to finish uploading the driver qualification exams that they conducted during an eight-month window when the National Registry website was offline due to a hacking issue.

In a notice published on Monday, Aug. 9, in the Federal Register, FMCSA requests that medical examiners submit results of physical qualification examinations conducted during the National Registry of Certified Medical Examiners outage by Sept. 30.

The National Registry website was offline from Dec. 1, 2017, through Aug. 13, 2018, during ‘a lengthy outage.’

According to an audit released in January by the Office of Inspector General, FMCSA suspended medical examiners’ uploading of driver examinations until system functionality was restored. Because of the outage and technical issues in relaunching the registry, OIG auditors estimate approximately 780,000 driver examinations could be missing from the database.

“Unfortunately, during the outage, (medical examiners) were not able to access their National Registry accounts to upload results of examinations conducted. MEs were encouraged to continue conducting physical qualification examinations and issuing medical examiner’s certificates to qualified CMV drivers,” FMCSA’s notice stated.

The notice also states that examiners were advised that they should segregate all examinations completed during the outage and “be prepared to upload them to the National Registry system when it is back online and operating normally.”

FMCSA says it encouraged medical examiners to continue conducting driver qualification exams during the outage. The agency also says it instructed examiners to submit exam results to the website once upload functionality was restored.

The upload functionality was fully restored on Aug. 13, 2018, but the agency notices states that “a significant number of healthcare professionals have not uploaded the results from examinations conducted during the National Registry outage.” The agency estimates as many as 14,000 medical examiners may still have exam results that need to be uploaded.

Medical examiner website rule

FMCSA established the National Registry website in April 2012. Medical examiners are required to submit a commercial motor vehicle Driver Medical Examination Results Form, MCSA-5850, to FMCSA for each physical examination conducted during the previous month for any driver who is required to be examined by an ME listed on the National Registry.

The rule was amended in 2015 to require examiners to report results of all CMV drivers’ physical examinations conducted – including the results of examinations where the driver was found not to be qualified – to FMCSA by midnight local time of the next calendar day following the examination, beginning on June 22, 2018. LL