Tumult in San Joaquin County Coroner’s Office leads to higher costs
STOCKTON — The announced resignation of two San Joaquin County pathologists has cost the county more than $170,000 in fees to private consultants who have been conducting autopsies ever since, public records show.
The costs were detailed in invoices obtained by The Record for the months of December and January.
The county has long maintained contracts with private autopsy providers, who are supposed to act as occasional backups when the two staff pathologists are not available.
Now that the staff pathologists are not performing autopsies at all, citing interference in their work by Sheriff Steve Moore, the cost of services provided by the private pathologists has gone up dramatically.
“I’m concerned about the cost,” Supervisor Tom Patti said this week. “It’s a major factor. We don’t have a surplus of millions of dollars every year. Our budget is stretched and it’s tight. There are multiple demands that are equally important.”
The contract pathologists did not submit any bills to the county for the months of September through November, when staff pathologists Bennet Omalu and Susan Parson still were conducting autopsies.
That changed quickly in December once Omalu and Parson had announced that they were leaving and no longer would do those autopsies. The private providers — Forensic Consultants Medical Group of Stockton and Forensic Medical Group of Fairfield — together performed more than 100 autopsies in December and January.
The procedures cost at least $1,250 to $1,500 each, with other services such as testing and basic examinations costing less. The Fairfield company also charged $4,400 in travel expenses.
The ongoing costs are cited by some observers as one reason that San Joaquin should decide whether to replace its traditional sheriff-coroner’s office with an independent medical examiner’s office. Omalu and Parson have said they would consider staying if that change is made.
Two of the five San Joaquin supervisors, including Patti, have called for expediting that decision. The other three have said that it’s important to wait for an outside contractor’s review of the coroner’s office — the results of which are expected in April — before taking action.
A medical examiner’s office “costs more money,” Supervisor Chuck Winn said at a meeting earlier this month. “That’s just the bottom line. You talk about the concern about wasting funds, well, I’m just as concerned about entering into something in the future that’s going to cost us a lot more than what we currently spend.”
San Joaquin originally hired staff pathologists in part because that is cheaper than relying upon contractors.
Omalu and Parson together earn more than $550,000 per year, which breaks down to less than $50,000 per month. Using the private pathologists, San Joaquin County spent close to $85,000 in both December and January.
It’s actually costing even more, however, considering that Parson and Omalu technically still are employees and still are earning their salaries until Feb. 25 and March 5, respectively. Each pathologist gave three months’ notice in order to close out existing investigations.
In other words, the $170,000 spent by the county on private pathologists was in addition to the staff pathologists’ salaries.
Moore has denied manipulating the staff pathologists. A spokesman said the $170,000 will come from the existing sheriff-coroner budget of $2.4 million, and noted that the private pathologists had been used at times in the past, even before the announced resignations.
“At this time there is no impact to other county services,” Deputy Dave Konecny said, “but the expenditures will be monitored for any potential impact on the overall budget.”
Sheriff Moore’s opponent in the June election, Pat Withrow, called the $170,000 cost to date “just another example of how Steve Moore’s mismanagement of his personnel and of his budget continues to cost the taxpayers hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars.”
He cited other unrelated issues such as the $1.6 million settlement with the family of Jeremy Lum, who was found drowned in the San Joaquin River days after he was released from the County Jail in 2009. Lum suffered from mental health problems and his family said he should have been escorted home. County officials denied any wrongdoing in that case.
Speaking of the Coroner’s Office issue, Withrow said: “We need to solve this. We need to fix this thing now.”