Families Suffer As Medical Examiners Struggle With Backlogs

BOSTON (AP) — One of the most difficult things about losing her son was not knowing why. Rosanne Carruthers needed to understand how an active, outdoorsy man with no apparent health problems could drop dead at 34. Carruthers, a nurse, performed CPR after her son, Neil, collapsed in their suburban Boston home. For more than a year, she wondered: Was there something more she could have done? And were her daughter and her grandchildren at risk, too? For the Carruthers family and others across the country, long delays in receiving death certificates and autopsy reports from medical examiners can not only compound grief, but also can create financial hardships by holding up life insurance payouts and other benefits. The delays are driven largely by underfunding, a severe shortage of medical examiners and relatively low pay when compared with other medical specialties. “It needs to change,” Rosanne Carruthers said. “Families should not have to wait like we had to wait to find out things that could affect other family members.” — In Rhode Island, the chief medical examiner resigned in August after the state’s national accreditation was downgraded. An inspection found there weren’t enough staffers to handle death investigations — just five people to handle more than 1,200 cases in 2014. — In Montana, state officials had to send bodies elsewhere for autopsies last summer after the state’s only two forensic medical examiners qualified t...
Source: WBZ-TV - Breaking News, Weather and Sports for Boston, Worcester and New Hampshire - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Health Local News Medical examiners Source Type: news