FMCSA Removes Non-Compliant Medical Examiners: What Now?

If you learned that some of your drivers may have received their Medical Examiner’s Certificates (MECs) from non-compliant doctors and they had one month to get new med cards, how easy would it be for you to identify who needed new certificates?

If your answer is “not easy” — and you’re imagining sifting through mountains of paperwork or an untold number of PDFs because ME numbers aren’t stored in your spreadsheets or software — you’re not in a great position. 

In fact, you are at risk of being out of compliance with federal regulations, and your drivers are at risk of having their CDLs downgraded by the state. 

The scenario above is not a hypothetical. It just happened in April, affecting thousands of drivers across the U.S. 

What happened?

On April 11, the U.S. Department of Transportation’s (USDOT) Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) said it was removing non-compliant medical examiners from the National Registry “to maintain the integrity of the medical certification process and ensure that only qualified, properly trained professionals are certifying the physical qualifications of commercial motor vehicle drivers.”

The government became concerned about the high volume of physical qualification examinations conducted by two Houston-area chiropractors: Dr. Jenny Le (National Registry No. 4762579227) and Dr. Dustin Mai (National Registry No. 7120983977). 

After a federal investigation, FMCSA determined these examiners failed to correctly apply standards in determining that drivers are physically qualified to operate a commercial motor vehicle, so it voided thousands of unexpired MECs these doctors issued between March 2023 and March 2025. This move affected 15,225 drivers.

What does it mean for drivers?

Drivers who received their MECs from Dr. Le or Dr. Mai were required to obtain a new certificate by May 10 from one of the 38,000-plus medical examiners listed on the National Registry. 

Failure to get a new med card will prompt the state driver licensing agency to initiate procedures to downgrade the driver’s CDL.

What does it mean for Safety Directors?

It’s your job to ensure affected drivers obtain a new certificate, so you can update your records with their new, compliant med cards. 

Ultimately, compliance issues like this one are data issues. The question is: How quickly can you access your data so you can identify drivers who need new exams and communicate the change to them? Your DOT compliance software should make it easy for you.

How Avatar can help

At Avatar, thanks to new artificial intelligence and automation capabilities within DriverHub, all of your drivers’ data, including medical examiner registry numbers, are searchable with a few keystrokes.

The technology that allows easy access to the data is the AvatarAssistant’s Med Card Scanner. This AI-enabled tool automatically extracts data from medical examiner certificates, schedules driver reminders and cross-references medical examiner details with the registration database.  

When the FMCSA announced it was removing non-compliant examiners in April — just a few weeks after DriverHub enabled the Med Card Scanner — the Avatar Client Success team identified several clients whose drivers had med cards that were issued by Dr. Le and Dr. Mai and needed to be updated. 

With the potential for FMCSA to investigate and remove more examiners from the registry any time (and other med card-related rule changes coming down the pike), Avatar’s proactive client success team and AI capabilities are a powerful combination for transportation Safety Directors to have on their side. 

As FMCSA rolls out new processes, we encourage companies to follow our proven process by requiring your driver to get a copy of their medical card and submit it to you via text message immediately after leaving the doctor’s office. From there, you can utilize our AI-enabled Med Card scanner to ensure the examiner is within the national registry and update the expiration date.

Interested in seeing AvatarAssistant in action and learning how you can benefit when regulatory and compliance changes like this come down the pike? Contact Avatar for more information.