You may not keep your doctor Physicians' ability to provide DOT physicals

If we are going to be treated as if we are pilots, then we need to have other changes made to the regulations that allow us to do our jobs, like HOS changes made to allow us to judge our own time to take breaks and to split the sleeper time.

 

This law is an absolute joke. Who would know my health status better then the doctor I have had for the past 10 years. I'm not sure if my Dr. is signed on. I will find out in march. I hope he will be.

 

No argument there. However, most doctors do not understand the dot physical.

I see a big problem here for those that are not approved by the "certified" doctor because of cardiac problems where they have had to go to the cardiologist for the physical. What if they do not want to participate?

 

I think that the joke is that we even need it for the average person, a one size fits all solution to a problem that never really existed in the past seems to be counter productive. AND not to make this a political issue in this thread - it really is when we can't be represented through the process other than to voice our opinion when regulations come up for public comment, we fail ourselves. Sleep apnea is one such condition that does effect a lot of people but how the regulations are written and the past record of the FMCSA in their use of false or questionable studies to write regulations (the study used had ZERO cases involving trucks and no record of proper sleep studies used to confirm an accident was caused by fatigue of a driver), makes it more of a case where we need to be more politically involved.

On the other hand for those who don't take care of themselves (and many don't), just like the issue of HOS and why it is there, physicals provide one level of protection which we can rightfully justify, that is to provide many of us a limit in order to take corrective measures so not to just die while we are driving. Diabetes and other things which can be hard to control, cardiac conditions and so on are a good reason for this limit and the physical, which can allow those with specific conditions to seek help.
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One last thing I wonder about is how this will actually be effected by Obama care, seeing that the law and the regulations are all in flux. What I mean is the title of the thread is clear about the subject of registered doctors doing DOT physicals but the idea of keeping your regular doc is already a problem for many under the new law/regulations so what if you can't pay for it out of pocket and have to have an insurance cover the cost, this may sound dumb but already there is talk in the medical/insurance industry (thanks to the electronic medical records thing) which will mess with other coverage if you need another physical later on within the year.

 

I would agree. The current regulations are specific as to what is required from a doctor doing a DOT physical. All the major diagnoses are described in the current regs, i.e., high blood pressure, heart attack history, diabetes, etc. This will only cause some family docs to stop doing the DOT physicals. It will not affect those clinics that do a lot of DOT physicals as their main core of business, but will affect the small family doctor office. And it will adversely affect the drivers that have to go to different docs, as a result.

I wish I had seen this coming in the Federal Register so I could protest it, but I am assuming it is too late now? If not we need to get a lot of drivers to protest this new rule.

 

I just did a search at "https://nationalregistry.fmcsa.dot.gov/NRPublicUI" and found that my doctor is not on the list of approved doctors. There is one doctor in my town that is on the list.....so I will have to go to that doctor for my next physical.

 

You can still comment on these regulations at http://www.regulations.gov/#!documentDetail;D=FMCSA-2012-0178-0001

You can also see the comments filed by Schneider and LandStar at this web site. The Schneider comments made some good points about having drivers continue to receive a Medical card from their doctor, as it would give you the date that you needed to redo your physical, so you would not miss the deadline to get your next physical done. The Schneider comments were pretty practical and I agreed with a number of them.

 

And don't for get the new physical is going to b tough. You'll need to strip down where a gown and jump throw a bunch of hoops. No more turn head cough. There going to get down a dirty. And if doc forgets to get the physical log form to fmca with in a time frame can't Rembert of its 24 or 48 hrs your physical will b void and you'll need to redo it. Bunch of bs is what it is.

 

My Husband has been off on disability since December, the company he works for had him go in for a new physical with a DOT certified Doctor. The doctor told him went and got his certification, but there are over 3,000 pages of regulations that he has to deal with! And guess who's at the bottom of this besides DOT, the Obamacare! yep, that's what his doctor told him. His own doctor released him with a signed letter stating that he was able to go back to work, but the DOT says it has to state that he is "competent, and physically able to drive a commercial motor vehicle". Just a few more hoops to go through. I'm glad I've already gotten my physical and it's good for 2 more years!