CDL Exams by Frank Moskos MD
Have you been “certified” for the new CDL garbage? if so have you seen the actual federal rule? Here it is:
I particularly like the following:
The opportunity cost of time for an ME to attend certification training and testing was estimated at $83 per hour, and the time commitment for certification was estimated at 11.5 hours, for a total cost of approximately $954. If an ME took on these costs, approximately 148 examinations at most would be needed to pay back the investment of time required to become certified.
and:
The American Chiropractic Association and a comment signed by 147 chiropractors stated that the National Registry will both improve highway safety and reduce the number of erroneous driver disqualifications. They agreed that the ME certification program will raise the quality and conformity of the CMV driver physical examination. California and Iowa expressed similar opinions in stating that the training protocol will ensure that MEs are knowledgeable and capable of performing these examinations.
I for one will not be getting certified. It’s a bummer for my patients but it is good to know that all you have to do is 140 exams to pay off the fee for the privilege. This is on top of the”refresher” courses and new certification exams every ten years and reporting all the exams monthly and submitting a report even if there are none and doing frequent audits and such. I think that they have failed to account for 52% overhead (at least) that most of us pay to keep the lights on, likely making that a bit more more expensive than they have projected. Much like with EMR’s, this will likely drive cost up for no real benefit (as with all government regulations there is no evidence to back up any of this). Just one more bureaucratic mess foisted off on us for the goal of fostering more paperwork and more bureaucracy.
But look on the bright side of this: Point #2, 147 chiropractors trump MD’s! I love it. Perhaps chiropractic will solve all of medicine’s issues, seeing as they are so big on finding “erroneous diver qualifications” perhaps they can stamp out the rest of our problems with some adjustments and herbs…
I’m not doing them because everyone and I mean everyone tries to combine it with their “yearly” physical.
The diabetics are a joke. The ones that need insulin, refuse to go on it. I’m glad to get rid of that responsibility.
It took more work than it was worth.
Some patients look for loop holes -don’t go on insulin because they would lose their license to drive truck. Does matter that his 500 blood sugar effects his ability? What about the person who needs CPAP and falls asleep while driving his car but says he is fine when he drives his truck. The symptoms were not the problem it was the treatment was. I need the education just to figure out how to get these people off the road. To the patients I am the big bad by making them unemployed.
Since I live near Detroit which is the busiest border crossing for trucks between the USA and Canada, I think I will get certified and open a CDL clinic at the USA end of the bridge. I’ll put it right next to the medical marijuana clinic. CDL forms are not difficult to fill out so I should be able to schedule about 20 patients per hour. Even better, I may hire a PA to do the easy CDL exams so I can see another 20 patients per hour with chronic pain who require oxycodone 20 mg qid. I should be able to retire by 2017.
You know what makes this even better? With this new bit of bs, cdl licensing now requires more training (and more money, naturally) than faa licensing.
So according to the government, driving a truck is much more difficult than flying a jet and thus requires more training by MEs to okay then for the rigors of the highway.
Side note, the company that runs the training and makes money off of this new requirement…. Why can’t we get their lobby?
At our urgent care, this new regulation requires us to get ALL of our medical staff certified, since we do the exams on a walk-in basis. So I think we’ll only have to do 1240 exams or so to “break even”. This is probably considerably more than our current volume.
So what’s the problem? Aren’t we accustomed to unfunded mandates that cause us to lose money yet?