Counties need more money for autopsies
With the body count from overdose deaths rising rapidly in Ohio, Attorney General Mike DeWine says it’s time county coroners get some help paying for autopsies.
DeWine said at the Ohio State Coroners Association annual meeting in Dublin on Friday that the state should help counties pay for autopsies.
“If we don’t change things we’re going to have a tragedy where an autopsy was not done because there was not the money to do it,” DeWine said. “It’s only a matter of time before that occurs.”
DeWine said later that he has no specific plan or amount of state funding in mind, but wanted to get the discussion started.
“I’m not suggesting the state should pay for every autopsy in the state of Ohio. This is to start the debate. … If we don’t do something, we’re going to be sorry.”
Now, individual counties are responsible for picking up the cost of doing autopsies, which cost $1,200 to $1,500 apiece. About 11,000 autopsies are performed each year in Ohio.
But that number is rising, causing a strain on the limited budgets of 88 county coroners, especially in smaller, rural counties.
In reality, most of the autopsies in the state are done by about eight large counties, including Franklin, Cuyahoga and Montgomery. The smaller counties pay the larger counties to perform autopsies. Coroners typically must get their budgets approved by county commissioners, who are finding it harder to make ends meet with cutbacks from the state and lower tax revenue.
Autopsy costs are rising, both because of skyrocketing overdose deaths, which hit a record 3,050 statewide in 2015, and more sophisticated drug toxicology screens that add hundreds of dollars to determine the precise cause of death, especially with synthetic opioids.
Asked his opinion of DeWine’s idea to secure state help for counties, Ashtabula Chief Investigator Richard J. Mongell responded quickly: “Fantastic.”
Mongell said in addition to the cost of autopsies, other expenses are rising, including the salary of a pathologist, now running at up to $150,000 a year.
Trumbull County Coroner Humphrey Germaniuk said his office handled 328 overdose deaths last year and can’t find trained pathologists to conduct autopsies. He said medical professionals leave the county for higher-paying jobs elsewhere.
Earlier this year, Montgomery County Coroner Kent Harshbarger briefly was forced to use mobile units as morgues because of an overflow of overdose victims in the Dayton area.
DeWine, a former county prosecutor, said coroners are an “integral part of the criminal justice system” and must have enough money to do their job. He urged the coroners association to come up with ideas for state funding.