Hit To Medical Examiner As Heroin Deaths Continue
It’s a busy time for Dr. James Gill, the state’s chief medical examiner, and his already small staff of doctors.
He reported to the legislature’s appropriations committee that the increase in autopsies as a result of opioid overdoses has put undue stress on his office. Think about it. There were 723 overdoses, the majority of which were associated with overdoses from heroin/opioids. Absent the drugs, would those people have died?
Like pretty much all other departments, the OCME faces cuts, my colleague reported, to the tune of 5.75 percent. Gill said he was already down staff and had to let 11 vacancies remain unfilled and lay off two employees.
What makes this interesting is one of the people laid off was the IT professional who compiled the dense spreadsheet listing overdoses deaths in the past year.
So now Gill said, again according to my colleague, that the information will have to come from the state’s Vital Statistics bureau.
This data has been both a powerful tool for the media, such as the Courant, and for politicians and experts who discuss the deadly toll heroin of Connecticut.
Personally, I haven’t reached out to Vital Statistics. For another day.
Gill said he intends to continue to do toxicology reports for those whose death appears to be the result of an overdose. Otherwise, toxicology testing falls on the police departments, who will need to get outside help.
“We will make blood samples available to law enforcement for testing purposes but they will have to arrange for it and pay for it,” Gill told the Courant.
