So why all the fuss over the Medical Examiner’s office? I guess the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner (OCME) issue goes straight to the governor’s central campaign theme of gimmick-free government—that government is suppose to work for all of us in a transparent way for us to work together to improve.
Some background: In the wake of a Boston Herald series on lost body parts and misidentified bodies at the OCME, the Joint Committee on Public Safety and Homeland Security held an oversight hearing in December 2003. We had whistleblowers testify from the OCME who spoke about the administrative and budgetary problems of the office, as well as District Attorneys who testified about the problems they encountered in prosecuting cases--problems including long turnaround times for autopsy reports.
The OCME’s office was in disarray due to administrative failures and budget deficiencies. At the hearing, it was revealed that a federal investigation on the misuse of grant money had commenced and only two OCME facilities, one full-time and one part-time, were operating in the state after the facilities in Worcester and Pocasset were closed due to their respective deteriorating conditions. The Committee also found inadequate administrative procedures that led to backlogs of cases, the loss of body parts, and other problems that challenged the integrity of the OCME’s office.
Out of the hearing stemmed a movement to find a new Chief Medical Examiner to lead the OCME’s office in a new direction. In April 2005, Dr. Mark Flomenbaum was hired to direct the agency. The Legislature also appropriated additional monies -- $3.6 million in FY 2005 to $7.7 million in FY 2007 -- for the OCME’s office which increased the overall salaries of the office’s professional medical examiners and allowed Dr. Flomenbaum to hire new staff, including a team of new Medico-Legal Investigators to process medical evidence from death scenes and provide a more detailed and professional analysis of all unattended deaths in the state. He expedited the streamlining of the autopsy rate and lessened turnaround time for reports and toxicology reports. He has also increased the number of autopsies in the office dramatically from 2694 in 2005 to 3552 in 2006.
So how is he the one criticized when he’s done the job he was hired to do? It is fair criticism of the OCME to observe that there are bodies stacking up on Albany Street, and that the equipment there is dated to say the least (the X-ray machine is from 1974!) however, this is the result of closing two other full-time offices and sending their cases to this single office. The poor ventilation at the Albany Street facility, the lack of vehicles, and the lack of sufficient refrigeration have all been identified as needs in writing to the House and Senate Ways and Means committees, as well as to the Public Safety committee.
At the end of last week, the Executive Office of Public Safety (EOPS) announced they were directing the chief of the OCME to begin to ‘move the bodies’ quicker. In other words, shorten the time allotted to search for next-of-kin of unidentified bodies before sending them to the Potter’s Field cemetery in Dorchester for deceased indigents. The EOPS answer to the problem was not to recognize that the reason for this overcrowding was systemic and that the answer needs to be systemic—like re-opening the other OCME offices. Rather, the EOPS prescription was to abandon the humane policies of the current OCME to accommodate the coarse realities of governing in the 21st century, where it always seems to pay dividends to be penny-wise and pound foolish.
As for Flomenbaum, I have met him only twice in his tenure here, and I do not know him personally at all, but I take my hat off to him for entering this most-political of environments to do an important job, especially on behalf of families with missing loved ones. The Globe’s editorial today has it right….there is much to be done at the OCME, but not much more it’s chief can do without all of our help.
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