TED GRIGGS

The state legislature recently passed a law to standardize the procedures coroners must follow in death investigations, and the bill's author is working to set up a study of methods to help Arkansas's coroners do their jobs better.
Rep. Gene Shelby, MD, D-Hot Springs, said the bill, HB 1437, passed easily after he amended it to drop a 14-member coroner's advisory task force.

"Some people thought it was a bigger thing than I envisioned it to be, so I decided to take that out of the bill," Shelby said.

Shelby said there were concerns over the makeup of the proposed task force and its specific functions. The task force would have included four county coroners; one representative of the Arkansas Coroner's Association; two representatives of the funeral home industry, a coroner and non-coroner; an attorney; a doctor; a hospice nurse; and representatives from the Arkansas Sheriff's Association and a state health officer.

Shelby said his idea for the task force's duties was fairly simple: to provide some direction on how the state could improve the way coroners functioned.
Coroners are elected in all but two of Arkansas's 75 counties. Prior to the legislative session, Shelby, himself the former coroner for Garland County, had talked about requiring some continuing education for coroners once they were elected.

Shelby said he and Sen. Mary Anne Salmon, D-North Little Rock, are working together to establish an interim study that will look into the same sorts of things the proposed advisory task force would have explored.

"Depending on what ideas we come up with over the next year or so, we'll have another bill in the next session to address some of those issues," Shelby said.
Shelby said he did not know how much the study will cost but expects the expense to be limited.

He hopes to secure funding through the Interim Committee on Public Health. If the committee adopts the interim study, there will at least be staff funds to do research and organize the results, Shelby said.

"We'll want to make sure that all the people that are kind of interested in the function of coroners are invited to the meetings that we'll have," Shelby said. "And it will probably also have some staff research looking at some of the other states and how their coroners function and what they're doing to improve death investigations."

Shelby said states vary in the way they handle death investigations, and he does not know which models Arkansas should follow to improve coroners' operations.
In some states, such as California, county coroners are basically the same as state medical examiners in Arkansas, Shelby said. The Los Angeles coroner's office is run by a forensic pathologist and has a staff that goes out to do the onsite investigations.

Other states have a strictly medical examiner system, Shelby said. Instead of having coroners do the onsite work, different divisions of the state medical examiner's office do the onsite investigations.

Arkansas and some other states have a combination coroner-medical examiner system.

"One of the things we'll be able to do with this study is to look at … other states with a similar arrangement, how they're doing things," Shelby said.
Until now, Arkansas did not require a standardized form for coroner's reports, and each county provided the information in its own way. Shelby's bill describes what information must be included so that law enforcement officials, the state Medical Examiner's Office and others all get the same information.

Shelby's bill will require all coroners to investigate the deaths of people under 18. The coroners must also issue a preliminary report on those deaths within five days, and if indicated, a follow-up report.

Arkansas has one of the United States' highest infant-mortality rates — one in four — and one of the highest mortality rates for people under 18, according to the state House of Representatives newsletter. Few of the infants' or children's deaths are investigated.

For cases in which a person died without a medical professional present, or as the result of a homicide, accident or suicide, Shelby's bill requires coroners to include the cause and manner of death, the time of death if known, and details on the condition of the body.

The bill also lays out a coroner's responsibilities in investigating a death. Although coroners' duties do not include any criminal investigation, they must assist law enforcement officials who ask for help.

In addition, Shelby's bill directs coroners on how to collect and dispose of the dead person's prescription medication, which will be disposed of according to a circuit court order or forwarded to the state Department of Health and Human Services within 30 days for destruction.


April 2007