(C) Verite News New Orleans This story was originally published by Verite News New Orleans and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Once a go-to for the region, Orleans coroner now performing few out-of-parish autopsies [1] ['Katie Jane Fernelius', 'More Katie Jane Fernelius', 'Verite News', '.Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Coauthors.Is-Layout-Flow', 'Class', 'Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus', 'Display Inline', '.Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Avatar', 'Where Img', 'Height Auto Max-Width'] Date: 2024-07-09 For years, the New Orleans coroner was the de facto death investigator for rural parishes throughout southeast and central Louisiana, performing as many as 474 autopsies a year on behalf of smaller offices with little in-house capacity. But that practice has all but disappeared in the past several years, along with the fees the office once received for providing the service, according to recent financial records. The revenue that the Orleans Parish Coroner’s Office gets from performing autopsies and toxicology reports for other parishes is down 94% since 2018, the year that Dr. Dwight McKenna was sworn in as coroner. ­It’s a stark difference for an office that a decade ago was criticized for performing too many out-of-parish autopsies at too low of a price. In a recent monthly budget report submitted to the City Council, the office wrote that its self-generated revenue could no longer cover professional contracts, requiring the office to move money in its operating budget to cover the losses. According to McKenna, who declined to be interviewed for this story but provided a one-sentence explanation over email, the office is no longer able to offer out-of-parish autopsy services because there are too few pathologists to accommodate such requests, leading to the revenue decline. McKenna’s office has been the regular subject of critical headlines due to broken A/C systems, malfunctioning morgue coolers, and instances of failing to identify bodies and notifying next of kin. McKenna has blamed challenges with staffing, funding, and failing facilities as the cause of these issues. (The coroner is working in a nearly new facility that boasts a hospital-grade autopsy suite.) At the same time, the Coroner’s Office’s budget allocation from the city of New Orleans has increased by 75% during McKenna’s tenure, and recent budget reports to the City Council indicate that the office has no vacant positions for pathologists. McKenna did not respond to Verite’s questions about how many pathologists the office would need to hire to address his stated need for more. New Orleans Coroner Dr. Dwight McKenna But in late 2023, the coroner asked the New Orleans City Council for about $500,000 more in funding than Mayor LaToya Cantrell proposed in her 2024 budget. The money would have covered several new positions, including four additional death investigators, according to a budget presentation McKenna prepared Ultimately, the council denied McKenna’s request and passed Cantrell’s proposed budget for the office. Former Coroner Jeff Rouse, who served one term as coroner and dropped out during his re-election campaign against McKenna, insists that the decline in out-of-parish autopsies is a good thing, freeing up the office to focus on services within the parish. “I think it’s great that they are declining out-of-parish autopsies,” Rouse said. “They are extra work foisted upon the whole system in order to make enough money to have the funds to run the whole office. It was a necessary evil that the office did out-of-parish autopsies.” City once served parishes across the region New Orleans was once the go-to office for many small parishes seeking autopsies, largely because of policies established under the decades-long tenure of Frank Minyard, whose office was known for performing autopsies at very low prices. Minyard, who died in 2020, came under fire for this practice, prompting an investigation by the Office of the Inspector General. Minyard claimed that the smaller parishes couldn’t afford costly autopsies, but critics claimed that the workload burdened an office already struggling with depleted resources. Still, Minyard had longstanding relationships with many small parishes. “We’d been using New Orleans for forever with Frank Minyard,” said Randall Poche, coroner for St. James Parish. “My dad was the coroner before me, so we had probably 30-plus years of using New Orleans. But the prices went up with the new coroner, so we moved our services to Jefferson Parish.” That new coroner was Rouse. When Rouse replaced Minyard in 2014, one of his first acts as coroner was raising the price of performing an autopsy, as well as advocating for a budgetary increase to reduce the office’s reliance on that revenue stream. But even with these changes, his office continued to perform autopsies for other parishes. That has changed under McKenna as the practice of performing out-of-parish autopsies appears to be slowly and quietly grinding to a halt. And though McKenna says it is an intentional decision based on available resources, fewer out-of-parish autopsies means less money flowing into the office. According to annual audits prepared for the Orleans Parish Coroner’s Office, revenues from performing autopsy reports have decreased dramatically. When McKenna took office in 2018, the office generated over $200,000 in revenue from performing autopsies and toxicology reports for other parishes. By last year, those revenues had declined to just $12,240. 2017 to 2018: $219,590 2018 to 2019:: $164,620 2019 to 2020: $155,095 2020 to 2021: $32,930 2021 to 2022: $36,550 2022 to 2023: $12,240 The Coroner’s Office receives approximately $4 million in support from the City Council, so even if the office were performing as many out-of-parish autopsies as it was in 2017, the procedures would only account for about 5% of its revenues. Still, the decline indicates a dramatic shift in the office’s workload. As New Orleans performs fewer and fewer autopsies for small parishes across the state, those services are moving to other large parishes, including Jefferson Parish. Jefferson Parish doing more outside business By comparison, over the same six-year period, Jefferson Parish Coroner’s Office “charges for services,” which includes out-of-parish autopsies, have more than doubled, from $385,433 in the 2017 fiscal year to $839,726 in the 2022 fiscal year. Tim Genevay, the public information officer for the Jefferson Parish Coroner’s Office, said that his office’s out-of-parish autopsies are increasing. According to Genevay, in 2022, the Jefferson Parish office performed 146 autopsies for other parishes. In 2023, that number climbed to 229. Autopsies can range in price from approximately $700 for a simple external exam, to well over $2,000 for autopsies for a homicide investigation, Genevay said. He said that Jefferson Parish performed autopsies for 15 parishes last year, including its own, which is higher than their historical average of 10 parishes. “Fourteen other parishes is kind of high, which makes me think that somebody else is dropping cases, like Orleans,” Genevay said. “I don’t know what is going on in Orleans Parish. I did hear they are taking less – and maybe not any – out-of-parish autopsies. But they kind of isolate themselves and don’t talk to anybody. So, it is difficult to get what is factual versus what is hearsay.” The fact that coroners in New Orleans and Jefferson Parish have performed so many autopsies for other parishes is a consequence of how Louisiana’s locally funded coroners offices are organized: Though some large parishes have better-funded offices, many smaller parishes cannot afford to fund and sustain their own full-service coroner’s offices. So, those smaller parishes frequently outsource autopsies and toxicology reports to better-resourced neighbors. The best-funded coroner’s offices in the state are in Jefferson Parish and St. Tammany Parish, where millages fund well-regarded facilities and staff. (Last year, St. Tammany voters declined to renew the 20-year millage.) “When I was in office, [out-of-parish autopsy revenue] was basically used to buy supplies, to do basic things that the city should’ve been funding totally,” Rouse said. “That’s a legacy from the fact that the Coroner’s Office before me was horribly underfunded, so we had to scrimp and save and earn extra money just to do our jobs.” However, under McKenna, the coroner’s budget has increased: In 2017, the year before McKenna took office, the coroner was allocated $2.26 million from the general fund in the city’s annual budget. But that number has steadily climbed over the six years that McKenna has been in an office, to just over $4 million in 2024. “Dwight is a better businessman and a more forceful negotiator than I could ever hope to be,” Rouse said. “I know that Dwight has been more successful than me in getting even more funding over time.” Though Rouse views the shift in optimistic terms, in a recent monthly budget report submitted to the City Council, the Coroner’s Office noted that “self generating funds can no longer cover professional contracts due to loss in revenue.” McKenna did not answer questions for this story about the number of pathologists his office has on contract or whether he is seeking to hire more. Related Republish This Story Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license. 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