The office had amassed a backlog because of staffing shortages, which forced state officials to ask the federal government for help.
The medical examiner’s office investigates violent and suspicious deaths and deaths in which a physician was not present, and performs autopsies to determine the cause and manner of death. Before December 2021, the office conducted most autopsies within 24 hours, the report says.
The Maryland medical examiner’s office, one of the busiest morgues in the nation, and others across the country have struggled to keep pace with deaths due to violence, the coronavirus and drug overdoses as agencies suffered staffing shortages.At the height of the logjam, the odor of decomposed bodies prompted officials to move most bodies to a makeshift morgue of refrigerated trailers in a downtown city parking garage in Baltimore.
The backlog delayed funerals and affected some prosecutions because of delays in autopsy reports and difficulty in finding medical examiners for murder trials.The National Association of Medical Examiners periodically downgraded the office’s accreditation because of long-standing staffing inadequacies, although NAME waved compliance for all facilities in early 2021, because of the pandemic, and has not yet reinstated the process, according to the report.
The main objective of the audit, conducted by the General Assembly Office of Legislative Audits, was to review the office’s finances from Sept. 7, 2017 to Sept. 30, 2021.