El Paso County Coroner’s Office breaks record number of autopsies in one day
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KRDO) -- The El Paso County Coroner's Office reports that they've broken a daily record with the number of autopsies completed in one day by completing 17 a couple of weeks ago.
The number of overall death investigations is up too by about 600 this year compared to last.
The cause of the uptick is a little unclear, but the El Paso County Coroner, Dr. Leon Kelly, said the only cause of death that's down this year so far is suicide.
"That's the one area where we're actually running behind last year, which is some good news. That's a bright spot," Dr. Kelly said.
He reported that drug deaths are up across the board, but fentanyl deaths are climbing faster than any other. He predicts this will be the first year that the number of fentanyl deaths surpasses the number of methamphetamine deaths.
"Last year was a record year for fentanyl and we were at 47. So, still with almost, you know, more than two months left of stats for the year, we'll probably at least double and we'll approach probably, you know, 100 100-plus cases of fentanyl," Dr. Kelly said.
COVID-19 is contributing as well. If a death is clearly due to COVID-19, they typically won't perform an autopsy or death investigation.
However, their office is now starting to see more deaths that turn out to be COVID-19-related from rural counties. The El Paso County Coroner's Office is the largest in the state as they serve more than 20 additional rural counties around Southern Colorado.
The labor shortage affecting all other industries is impacting their office too.
"It's tough to bring in new employees. There's a lot of competition out there for other positions that maybe aren't as emotionally or physically demanding as a position like this. We see incredibly difficult things every single day, and if you can make more money, doing something that's maybe a little less stressful, people are going to do it," Dr. Kelly said, adding that they're making it work despite the shortages.
They've had to cut back on their autopsy schedule on Saturdays in light of their staffing shortage.
"It's something that we deal with every day, we've actually had to change the way that we do scheduling because folks who are on call all night, we're basically running both ends," Dr. Kelly said.
