Medicolegal Death Investigation System Workshop Summary (2003) / Chapter Skim
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6. Comparing Medical Examiner and Coroner Systems
6. Comparing Medical Examiner and Coroner Systems
Pages 23-28
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From page 23... ...
The major advantages of a statewide medical examiner system are the quality of death investigations and forensic pathology services and their indepenclence frown population size, county budget variation, and politics. Certification of death is accomplished by highly trained medical professionals who can integrate autopsy findings with those frown the crime scene and the laboratory.
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From page 24... ...
Those features benefit not only death investigations but also public health epidemiology and surveillance. Virginia's office reports to the legislature each year on child fatalities, family violence, and domestic violence.
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From page 25... ...
It requires strong leadership, attention to state budget priorities and competition witty other public health and criminal justice programs, and hu~nan-resource management to ensure recruitment and retention of multiple types of professionals. An ideal statewide system has a medical examiner system to a medical school and subspecialty pathologists, forensic science laboratories and scientists, and public health systems and laboratories.
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From page 26... ...
Finally, being an elected official resonates with American political culture, which views elected officials as the best representatives of a community's needs and values. Two important disadvantages are that coroner systems are less likely to be medically proficient and that their structure often reflects piecemeal legislative reaction to inadequacies, rather than intelligent design.
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From page 27... ...
Other disadvantages are poorer quality of coroner investigations, poorer integration across jurisdictional boundaries, poorer information transfer, and poorer information-gathering. A coroner system can approximate the high quality of a medical examiner system, but greater impediments stand in the way.
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From page 28... ...
. Efforts to abolish coroner systems in Georgia were propelled by the Georgia Association of County Commissioners, which passed a resolution to eliminate the coroner offices on the basis of cost and inefficiency (however, the elimination of coroner offices has not been realized)
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