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After decades of conducting its own postmortem medical examinations through contracted physicians and pathologists, Humboldt County this month began outsourcing autopsy and pathology services to a Sacramento-based medical practice.

This change in longstanding procedure will more than double the cost of autopsies and pathology services — from less than $300,000 to $677,128 in General Fund expenditures per year — but a county staff report argues that it’s the only viable option given a shortage of licensed forensic pathologists serving rural California counties.

Early last year, the Coroner Division of the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office (HCSO) learned that its contracted forensic pathologist was no longer available due to medical issues. After searching for a replacement locally and across the region, HCSO found just one candidate — a Sacramento pathologist who expressed a willingness to travel to Humboldt County but whose schedule couldn’t accommodate the county’s workload. 

As a temporary solution, the county hired a contractor to conduct forensic autopsies as needed while also requesting mutual aid through Mendocino County. Now, HCSO has contracted with Bennet Omalu Pathology to provide comprehensive autopsy and postmortem examination services indefinitely.

A county staff report describes Dr. Omalu (who famously published findings on CTE in American football players and was portrayed by Will Smith in the 2015 movie “Concussion”) as “the most reasonable and reliable option,” noting that he provides coroner-related services for several other counties, including Mendocino.

“This contract is the only reasonable and sustainable option currently available to ensure Humboldt County maintains compliance with policies, procedures and the law,” the staff report says.

The Humboldt County Coroner Office, which was consolidated with the Sheriff’s Office in 2015, is legally responsible for investigating deaths from across the county, identifying the deceased and determining the date, time, place and manner of their demise.

Each year, roughly 800 deaths are reported to the Coroner Division for review. Of those, about 200 require autopsies, either because the cause of death has not been determined or because the death was unexpected, suspicious, accidental, suicidal, homicidal or requiring further inquiry.

New contract ends volunteer intern program

Emma, a College of the Redwoods student with hopes of becoming a medical examiner one day, received a text Monday evening from an employee in the Coroner Division, where she’s been interning as an autopsy assistant for nearly a year. (Emma is a pseudonym; she asked us not to use her real name.)

The text read, “Unfortunately, the autopsy volunteer program has been discontinued.”

Emma was stunned. 

“I was like, ‘The whole program? Why?’” she recalled when reached by phone on Tuesday.

She was informed that the outside company taking over autopsies, Bennet Omalu Pathology, has its own assistants.

“I’m kind of upset with the whole situation,” Emma told the Outpost. “I really, really loved going in and doing the autopsies and getting the work experience. It was kind of a big part of my life.”

As an intern, Emma said she and her fellow volunteers — of which there were nearly two dozen, last she heard — would assist on autopsies, which involved a wide variety of tasks, from prepping the room before the doctor arrived to drawing fluids, taking notes, documenting the size and weight of organs and sewing up and cleaning the body before returning it to the freezer. 

The volunteers were gaining in-the-field knowledge for a variety of careers.

“I worked with two people that were EMTs in training, and were using it as an opportunity to get that experience, and one person who is a firefighter in training, so it’s not like it’s just people who want to get into the coroners field,” Emma said, adding that the volunteer labor helped save the county money.

She plans to check with Bennet Omalu Pathology to see if they accept volunteer interns, but she’s not optimistic.

“I doubt I’m going to have many other opportunities like this,” Emma said. “It was kind of a major thing for me to have access to that sort of information on exactly what the field entailed. Not only did it give me the emotional experience I’m going to need going into the field … but it also gave me a lot of technical knowledge. It helped me learn how an autopsy goes. It helped me learn what the legal situations surrounding someone’s death are. It taught me a lot of things that you don’t learn in, you know, standard biology courses.”

California law requires county coroners to investigate certain deaths, including unnatural ones, deaths where the attending physician can’t determine a cause and deaths where a physician didn’t examine the body within a certain time period. 

The county describes autopsies as “one of the most serious and sensitive functions” it performs, noting, “The public depends on an independent and professional death investigation process.”

While the Sheriff’s Office acknowledges that outsourcing these services will be more expensive, the county says HCSO “has been unable to identify a practical, qualified, and legally sufficient alternative.”