Guide · medical proof
The typed phrase is "dot medical card cdlis" — carriers trying to work out what proves a CDL driver is medically certified now that the paper card is no longer the proof. Short answer: for CDL drivers, the state driving record is the proof. Filing the wrong one is how line 12 gets failed by carriers who did everything else right.
Line 12 of the automatic failures is §391.11(b)(4): knowingly using a driver who is not physically qualified. The DQ file item is §391.51(b)(6) — the medical examiner's certificate or, for a CDL driver, the note and record the rule substitutes for it. Under the Medical Examiner's Certification Integration rule (NRII, effective 2025), examiners report results electronically to the state, and the state posts the medical status to the driver's CDL record in CDLIS. The state driving record (the MVR showing medical certification status) became the document of record for CDL drivers.
The trap is a drawer full of paper cards and an empty state record: the driver was examined, the card is real, but the examiner's report never posted, or the carrier never pulled the record that proves it. In the audit, what is not in the file is not credited. Pull the record; check the status line; file the record.
Medical proof is one of the five dated items per driver in New Entrant Audit: type the expiration date and the page checks it against today on the spot — current, coming due, or overdue — and the rehearsal reads line 12 from the filed proof: the state record for CDL drivers, the certificate for the rest, never from a date typed into a spreadsheet.
Yes — §391.51(b)(8)(i) asks for your note verifying the examiner was listed on the National Registry on the date of the examination. It is one line of writing; its absence is one line of finding.
For the audit, the record is what counts until it is corrected — chase the examiner and the state licensing agency immediately, and keep the paper certificate with the correction correspondence in the file.
At every new certificate, and checked on the annual cycle with the rest of the file. The certificate's own expiration (usually two years, often shorter) is the clock that matters.