Survey is Step One on Road to Better Highway Safety

Family physicians who volunteer to take a survey could say their action helped improve safety on the nation's highways.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, or FMSCA, has been charged under the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users with establishing a National Registry of Certified Medical Examiners, or NRCME, program. To begin that task, FMSCA is seeking 5,000 medical professionals who currently conduct medical exams for commercial motor vehicle operators to step forward and submit a request to participate in a role delineation survey later this year.

The deadline to sign up to participate in the survey stage is July 15.

After all parties involved in its creation have vetted the survey, paper copies will be mailed to volunteers for completion.

FMSCA needs 1,000 volunteers from each of five groups: medical doctors, doctors of osteopathy, doctors of chiropractic, advanced practice nurses and physician assistants. FMSCA officials say there's currently no system in place to identify existing examiners, but family physician offices may be performing a good number of these exams.

Findings from the survey will be used to lay a foundation for developing a certification test to assess skills for FMSCA medical examiners. After the test is in place, the NRCME certification program will become the sole program authorized to qualify and list certified medical examiners who can perform the required physical exam on interstate commercial drivers.