Report: State Medical Examiner’s office overloaded, has lost national accreditation

The Chief Medical Examiner testified Friday that the state’s medical examiners have had to perform so many autopsies due partly to drug overdoses, that the office lost full national accreditation last year.

The number of accidental drug deaths increased 290 percent during the last five years, contributing to a 70 percent increase in autopsies, Chief Medical Examiner James Gill said during a joint Appropriations Committee hearing.

“Our office had no choice but to work beyond professional standards for the past three years and hope that the autopsy numbers would decrease,” he said. “They have not decreased.”

Accidental drug deaths climbed from 357 in 2012 to a preliminary count of 1040 in 2017, data showed. Fentanyl, a drug found in 14 drug overdose deaths in 2012, was found in 675 deaths in 2017, according to preliminary estimates.

The National Association of Medical Examiners has recommended Connecticut hire three more medical examiners to correct the deficiency, Gill said. The association re-evaluates the state office in the fall.

“Our loss of full accreditation already has been raised at criminal trials in attempts to impeach our work,” he said. “Because of the lag time between autopsies and homicide trials, I anticipate that these challenges will continue, as we are just starting to see cases come to trial of the autopsies that we have been doing since loss of full accreditation.”

Medical examiners are performing more than 325 autopsies a year, far exceeding professional standards for the number each should perform, Gill said.