FARMINGTON— After months of uncertainty, the Office of the Chief State’s Medical Examiner has received a provisional accreditation for one year.
James Gill, M.D., Chief Medical Examiner, released a statement, “Today, the OCME has been formally notified by the National Association of Medical Examiners that it will be granted provisional accreditation for an additional 12 months. If the OCME does not address the staffing shortage by the end of these 12 months, the OCME will become non-accredited.”
Gill said the association noted the OCME had “made progress” in fixing some of the major deficiencies. They also said the OCME is still “critically understaffed on the professional level” and that this “is a most serious deficiency” and the “deficiency related to the unreasonable workloads of the medical examiners must be addressed.”
The OCME was given until Sept. 27 to fix the problems or lose accreditation completely.
The association says state medical examiners are performing more than 325 autopsies a year, the limit set by the association. The national group says the office needs two more medical examiners to get under the limit.
