With drug overdoses steadily driving up the number of autopsies performed by the Ramsey County Medical Examiner’s Office, more space to do the work is in order, county officials say.
The Ramsey County Board recently approved a $2.5 million expansion to the medical examiner’s office, which is located on University Avenue in St. Paul.
The funding will come out of the county’s 2016 capital improvement program fund.
The renovation will not change the building’s footprint, but instead will reconfigure the existing floor plan to create more workspace, according to county spokesperson, John Siqveland.
Once complete, the facility will have about 15,000 square feet of workspace, versus the roughly 11,000 square feet it has now. There are 10 full-time investigators staffed at the medical examiner’s facility.
The office serves Ramsey, Washington and 14 other smaller counties, including Aitkin, Blue Earth, Cass, Clay, Stearns, Waseca and others.
For Ramsey County alone, the number of autopsies climbed by some 40 percent between 2008 and 2014, according to information provided by the county. They grew 20 percent for Washington County. The smaller counties saw more modest increases, about 5 percent.
In total, investigators watched the total number of autopsies performed in the office jumped about 18 percent during that time period.
Drug overdoses, particularly from opiate-related substances such as heroin and prescription painkillers, have been one of the biggest drivers behind the growth, said Dr. Michael McGee, the county’s medical examiner for the past three decades.
“Medical examiners and coroners from everywhere in the United States are talking about this. People from the west coast to the east coast and everywhere in between. Big counties, small counties… These deaths are (taxing) all of us,” McGee said.
McGee added that while he’s seen drug overdose deaths spike at varying times during his career, this one is unique in its reach across ages, ethnicities and income-levels.
A report on drug trends released in April called Drug Abuse Trends in Minneapolis-St. Paul offered a glimmer of good news in its finding that opiate-related overdose deaths fell for the second year in a row in Hennepin County in 2015.
Conversely, Ramsey County saw a slight uptick, climbing from 42 related overdose deaths in 2014 to 47 in 2015.
Across Minnesota, drug overdoses related to opiates rose steadily from 2000 to 2013, the report found.
Also impacting the need for more space at the Medical Examiner’s office has been the evolving responsibilities expected of staff, McGee said.
As the capabilities of crime labs have grown over the years, staff investigators are charged with collecting more specimens for law enforcement, McGee said.
State laws surrounding infant and vulnerable adult death investigations have also created new demands, he added.
The expansion will create about 45 percent more workspace for autopsies by adding a small addition on the building’s roof that will house the facility’s heating, cooling and other mechanical systems. Those systems will also be replaced with more energy-efficient models.
The renovation of the Ramsey County Medical Examiner’s Office — built in 1994 — is expected to accommodate its growing workload for the next 15 years, the county reported.
Construction is expected to take place next summer.
All sudden and unexpected deaths must be reported to the medical examiner’s office.