Are you prepared to start using the United States Department of Transportation (DOT) Federal Motor Carrier Safety Association (FMCSA) Clearinghouse database? Well, the Drug and Alcohol Testing Association of Canada (DATAC) is here to show you the way! We are providing an online course to help you figure out exactly what the Clearinghouse is, and what you are supposed to do with it; whether you are a TPA, an employer, an MRO or a commercial driver.
Here are the basics: The FMCSA’s Commercial Driver’s License Drug and Alcohol Clearinghouse is a secure electronic federal database that will contain information about drivers who hold commercial driver’s licenses (CDL); it will be put into use as of January 6, 2020.
The Clearinghouse database will contain information on driver violations such as:
- Positive DOT drug test results
- DOT alcohol results of 0.040% BAC and above
- Alcohol use prior to post-accident alcohol testing
- Refusals to submit to DOT mandated testing
The DATAC course will help you learn the following:
- Employers who will learn how to properly report violations to the Clearinghouse and correctly obtain applicant or employee query consent.
- Medical Review Officers (MRO) and Third-party Administrators (TPA) will learn how to use the reporting process and administrate users.
- Substance Abuse Professionals (SAP) will also learn about the new requirements that direct SAPs to report individual drivers’ compliance (or non-compliance) with the return-to-duty process.
- Individual drivers will also learn how to review their own records in the online database, provide electronic consent for querying their information and more.
The DATAC course will also provide you with some helpful resources, such as form templates. The first step to using the database for employers, MROs, SAPs, and commercial drivers, will be to register for the database, this is also gone over in the DATAC course.
Registration has now opened so don’t delay! Register at: https://clearinghouse.fmcsa.dot.gov/Register
