County to see rise in autopsy costs

Under a new system based on population, Hernando will pay a larger share of the budget for the medical examiner for a five-county district.

By JAMIE MALERNEE

© St. Petersburg Times, published June 9, 2000

Autopsies and death investigations will cost Hernando County residents more than $100,000 extra next year following the approval of a new medical examiner budget that officials hope will improve the quality of service.

The jump is the result of both an overall budget increase -- from about $1.3-million last fiscal year to $1.7-million in 2001 -- and a change in the way costs are divided among the five counties that the medical examiner serves.

County Commissioner Chris Kingsley, who sits on the district medical examiner committee and wanted to keep the old payment schedule, is not pleased.

"We were outvoted on everything," he said, referring to the four other committee members from surrounding counties.

However, he expressed optimism that the new medical examiner, Dr. Valerie Rao, has already begun to make changes to increase the professionalism and thoroughness of the office. Concerns regarding the office came to a head this year after the former medical examiner, Dr. William Shutze, resigned. Soon after, county officials learned that Shutze had been medical examiner in name only while he lived out of state for at least two years, letting staffers and his daughter, an associate medical examiner, run the office in Leesburg.

Since Rao came on board in April, she has made an effort to go out to death scenes to investigate in person, Kingsley said. For example, she traveled to Hernando when a human skull was found in Royal Highlands and when authorities found a man's body buried in the back yard of a home on California Street east of Brooksville. Previously, death investigators, who had police training but no background in forensic medicine, were often the only ones to visit scenes.

"We're going from an Edsel to a Cadillac," Kingsley said of the level of service. "And we're going to be paying for it."

Hernando will pay 17.1 percent, or about $266,000, of the $1.5-million county portion of the new budget, compared with the 12 percent, or about $150,000, it used to pay. The new percentage is based on Hernando's population. The old way was based on a per-autopsy fee, with Hernando County accounting for 12 percent of the investigations for the five-county area.

Other board members said paying by population would be more stable, allowing local governments to better anticipate how much they would need to contribute annually, instead of waiting to see how many people died in a particular year.

In addition to the 2001 budget, the committee has tentatively approved $1.1-million to cover the medical examiner costs since Rao took over until the start of the next fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1.

Kingsley said this 6-month budget is high partly because of a one-time $291,000 request for equipment such as laptops, service vehicles and lab equipment to replace equipment that was taken from the Leesburg office by Shutze's daughter when she learned she would not succeed her father.

Dr. Susan Rendon says that the more than $100,000 worth of equipment she took was not county property but was purchased by a laboratory company she and her father ran out of the same office. The state attorney's office has declined to prosecute.

Committee members have asked Rao to reduce this one-time request by 20 percent. The committee is made up of one county commissioner from each of the counties in the medical examiner's district, which comprises Hernando, Citrus, Marion, Sumter and Lake counties.

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