Travis County Commissioners Court
June 6, 2006
Item 25
25 is to consider and take appropriate action on a proposal to accomplish any necessary reduction in the Travis County autopsy caseload. We discussed this item last week and gave ourselves a week to mull it over. Whatever we do, our intention is to notify counties that they need to start getting ready for July one in the event that we have vacancies that we have not filled and that we are severely understaffed and have to drastically reduce the caseload, there are steps that we need to take, so we wanted to go ahead and give them advanced notice. But if we have one or two situations even after July they can contact us. And if we have the capability to respond favorably at that time, ie, to take the body, we would.
>> yes, sir.
>> and the recommendation?
>> the recommendation, it really involves -- well, let me back up a little bit. The proposals that were discussed last week, which after discussions with the court have been sort of redirected and refined to be more specific. The first would be that we eliminate or we decline all private autopsy cases, which is about 1.5 cases per month. The second piece of that would be --
>> is that private out of county or --
>> both.
>> period.
>> all private cases, whether they're referred through Travis County or whether they're outside of Travis County. The second piece of it would be there are counties that send us cases on rare occasion that we do not have interlocal agreements with. And that we decline all the cases from those counties first.
>> so more agreements.
>> if we do not have an interlocal with those counties, we will not accept cases from those counties.
>> okay.
>> the third step would be for those counties that we consider to be out of region, that are not part of our capcog or our starflight area, that we decline cases from those counties until we reach our caseload. Which is approximately -- decreasing our caseload by 24 cases per month, assuming that we don't have adequate coverage to these supplemental contracts that we're implementing to provide the needed pathologist. If we do have added pathology and coverage, then we can continue to provide services to those counties, but if we don't we need a plan in place for which counties we're going to decline cases from. So this proposal would basically be if it's an out of region county that we have the option of declining to accept those cases from those regions.
>> the opposite of that is that we would -- we know that the capcog counties or the starflight counties, on the others we put them on notice that the day may come real soon where we don't have the ability to serve you. You need to be put on notice. You can contact us after July 1 or after that date and if you're lucky, we can work with you, but if not, you need to have another medical examiner facility that you have some relationship with.
>> right. Staff is recommending that we put the counties on notice that as of July 1 they need to neighboring make arrangements that if their cases are declined that they can send their cases elsewhere.
>> I do think that the Travis County private autopsies ought to be in the same position, meaning in you're lucky to contact us, then if we have the ability to work with you, then we will.
>> okay.
>> that's a little different than just telling these other four counties that we do private autopsies for that we're not doing private autopsies right now. I don't know that I would even tell them, contact us if we've got space, we'll do it, but I feel a responsibility for in county autopsies. I did get two or three counties from people who thought that the private Travis County autopsies were pretty important.
>> would this be for the people who are residents of Travis County or for family members who were the next of kin who were in Travis County? Because I think that's one of the issues that's come up before in previous discussions.
>> I guess I had in mind more people who died here.
>> the Travis County residents who are decedents would continue if we had space available to do those autopsies.
>> right. But that would not be a high priority for us. The high priority would be capcog and starflight counties and that would include 19 or 20, right? If I add these up, 10, 10, is that 20?
>> you mean the number of cases?
>> counties. Plus travis, I guess it's 21.
>> yes, that's correct.
>> move approval of the recommendation.
>> second.
>> and that an appropriate letter be drafted to notify all of the contract counties of this decision.
>> second.
>> discussion? I don't know that we can do better than that. And I think that it would be good for us to put people on notice. At least they'll have three or four weeks to try to start getting ready and we'll try to fill our vacancies. If we do get there, we'll have to deal with it. All in favor? That passes by unanimous vote. Thank you very much.
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Last Modified:
Wednesday, June 7, 2006 12:54 PM