The Clark County Medical Examiner’s Office is able to meet local demand for death investigations and autopsies, officials say, despite a national shortage of forensic pathologists and a nearly yearlong vacancy of the chief medical examiner position.
The medical examiner’s office conducts death investigations and autopsies of unnatural deaths in the county, including those that happen under suspicious circumstances or from unknown causes.
In 2023, the agency investigated 653 deaths, or 14 percent of all deaths in Clark County. That’s a 72 percent increase in the last 10 years, despite the county’s population growing by just 19 percent in that time, according to a department report.
Since former Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Martha Burt left the county in September 2023, the county has been unable to fill the position or the assistant medical examiner post that it oversees.
Still, Community Health Director Andrea Pruett said the department is meeting the need for services in other ways, through a combination of other staffers and the use of contractors.
“While we recruit for those positions, we have a team of incredible board-certified forensic pathologists who are providing the services that would be identical to those services that those two positions would provide,” Pruett said. “There’s been a shift in the discipline; many forensic pathologists are opting to contract for local services versus staying in one place and being an employee of a medical examiner’s office.”
The department balances the number of staffers and the number of contractors depending on the demand, Pruett said.
She said a wave of retirements in the industry, coupled with fewer people entering the profession, has created a nationwide shortage of qualified pathologists. And of those currently qualified for the county’s chief job, some prefer to work as contractors for multiple departments.
Pruett hopes adjustments in pay following a county government employment classification and compensation study will make the pay for the two vacancies more competitive.
One way the county has been able to boost the number of staffers, such as death investigators and autopsy technicians, is through the funds from a fee schedule approved by the Clark County Council in November 2022. The fees the department collects are tied to the number of deaths the office investigates, Pruett said, meaning the agency doesn’t collect more money than it needs for the work.
The increased number of those on staff means the department is better prepared to respond to scenes when contacted by law enforcement or paramedics about a suspicious death.
“That was something that we were starting to see impact our first responders. … Now, we’re much more situated to be able to respond to multiple co-occurring things during the day or the night or on a shift,” she said.
The fees are also slated to go toward the hiring of an additional autopsy technician who would also be trained to operate a machine to provide in-house toxicology reports.
That would cut down on the amount of time the office waits for results from the Washington State Patrol Crime Lab, which is one factor that can delay investigations, Pruett said.
Even with some delays being out of the department’s control, Pruett said it’s at a comfortable staffing level to provide services in a timely fashion.
“In terms of the service we provide day to day and the things that we have control over in our office, yes, our staffing levels are where we want and need them to be to provide responsive service,” she said. “There’s been a lot of infrastructure building in the past 18 months, and it takes time, and we just have an amazing group of really dedicated staff that have been here … that deserve an enormous amount of credit and gratitude for holding up that structure while it was being built.”
