FMCSA adds verification requirements for Clearinghouse

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is tightening the reins on verification requirements for the Drug and Alcohol Clearinghouse online database.

In late April, FMCSA announced that Medical Review Officers, Substance Abuse Professionals, third-party administrators and employers will now be required to take additional steps to verify their identities in the Clearinghouse.

The agency said that the new process will be completed using IDEMIA, a company specializing in secure identity verification. The Department of Homeland Security currently uses the IDEMIA system at airports across the country.

The online database allows employers, law enforcement and state agencies to identify drivers who are prohibited from driving due to drug or alcohol violations.

According to the agency, the move will “strengthen fraud prevention, improve record accuracy and enhance accountability” for the over six million users of the system.

“Safety is non-negotiable at FMCSA, and that means ensuring the systems we rely on are secure, accurate and trustworthy,” FMCSA Administrator Derek Barrs said.

For now, the new requirements apply only to Medical Review Officers, Substance Abuse Professionals, third-party administrators and employers. However, the agency said that future phases will extend to “most other users” but noted that CDL holders are already verified through state systems.

Owner-operators must act on drug and alcohol reporting

For owner-operators, keeping up with the paperwork required to maintain compliance can be daunting. Especially when the process is unfamiliar.

One of those paperwork hiccups that can cause confusion involves reporting drug and alcohol test results from the previous year.

While the information is not required to be reported by all carriers every year – only carriers with more than 1,000 employees are required to file it annually – the FMCSA can periodically request that a carrier with fewer than 1,000 employees submit its results.

According to FMCSA, that data is used to “quantify the incidence of drug and alcohol abuse in the commercial motor vehicle industry” to determine the agency’s random drug and alcohol testing rates for the following year.

If you are one of the carriers selected to report their 2025 drug and alcohol testing results, there are two important things you should know. First, the notice is legitimate and time-sensitive.

If you are a member of the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association and received a request, you can contact the Association’s compliance department to confirm the validity of the request.

Typically, those requests are sent out in early April via email and physical mail, with carriers given approximately three months from the date of notice to submit the results.

All carriers selected for the annual survey are required to participate and may face significant penalties for noncompliance. The current fines can range from $1,584 per day to $15,846 in total for failing to submit results.

The second thing carriers need to know about submitting results to the agency’s Drug and Alcohol Testing Management Information System is that you will have to do so on your own, even if you are a member of a drug and alcohol consortium.

You will need a current Login.gov account. That account is used to securely sign in to government websites and serves several purposes.

For those who have not already established an account, it can be done online.

After you have established an account, you will need to visit damis.dot.gov to input your results. New DAMIS users will be prompted to enter an activation code found on the FMCSA’s request letter. Existing users will simply need to use their Login.gov account to proceed.

Once you have accessed the system, you will input all testing results for the previous year. For carriers using a consortium, those totals will be provided to you by the consortium in a Management Information Systems report, which is typically prepared in March.

A more detailed walkthrough for submitting your results is available through FMCSA. LL