Rising U.S. Death Toll Overwhelms Too Few Medical Examiners
As more bodies arrive at medical examiners’ offices across the country, the result not only of additional deaths related to the pandemic but also an upward trajectory of homicides, overdoses and even traffic-related fatalities, the country’s production of forensic pathologists is failing to keep up with the workload.
Landwebs
As more bodies arrive at medical examiners’ offices across the country, the result not only of additional deaths related to the pandemic but also an upward trajectory of homicides, overdoses and even traffic-related fatalities, the country’s production of forensic pathologists is failing to keep up with the workload, especially during the pandemic, resulting in a backlog that has the current ranks scrambling for more storage space, reports Pew Stateline. As a result, some medical examiners are asking for increased local or state funding, while others are suggesting loan forgiveness and grant programs and more outreach for medical schools and even colleges to lure people into forensic pathology.
The crammed workload in many places is delaying timely autopsies or leading pathologists to perform more autopsies than the 250 a year recommended by the field’s accrediting body. In Texas alone, caseloads for medical examiners have doubled in the past five years. In Maricopa County, Arizona, which includes Phoenix, caseloads have grown at three times the rate of overall population growth; Virginia registered an increase of nearly 20 percent. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that as of Feb. 16, in addition to the 914,000 U.S. deaths attributed to COVID-19, there have been another 131,000 deaths since the pandemic started that it classifies as “excess,” meaning that they exceed the number that would normally have been expected. Meanwhile, the National Association of Medical Examiners currently lists openings for more jobs than the number of forensic pathologists who enter the workforce every year.
