In September, a human torso washed ashore on the Olympic Peninsula, a large arm of land in western Washington that lies across Puget Sound from Seattle. Authorities immediately wondered whether it might be the remains of one of the victims of the floatplane that crashed earlier in the month.
That answer wouldn’t come for another three weeks, however. Without a dedicated forensic pathologist in rural Clallam County, the remains were transferred to Thurston County, elongating the process. Once there, the identification was further delayed by a backlog, partially created by a national and statewide shortage of forensic pathologists.
Washington state’s latest bill—Senate Bill 5523—seeks to stop this situation from happening again by addressing the critical shortage of forensic pathologists, especially in rural areas.
Last week, SB 5523 unanimously passed the senate and was referred to committee in the house. That is a stark contrast to the fate of the similarly death investigation-focused Senate Bill 5776, which failed to move out of the Ways and Means Committee in February 2022.
The new SB 5523 is intended to incentivize scientists to enter the forensic pathologist profession by alleviating the student loan burden. The bill creates a student loan repayment program for board-certified forensic pathologists who work in counties with identified shortage areas. Pathologists would be eligible for up to $25,000 in student loan repayment for four years.
The bill also allocates monies to the Washington State Department of Health to market the northwest state to potential board-certified forensic pathologists. Per the bill terms, the marketing plan must include—but is not limited to—a focus on rural and underserved counties.
Digging deeper into the root of the problem, the bill also commissions a study on the current shortage of board-certified forensic pathologists, including recommended steps the state can take to foster a robust forensic pathology community.
The study must cover issues related to visa waivers, and methods to encourage enrollment in the University of Washington and Washington State University forensic pathology residency programs. This included recommendations on how to create two new forensic pathology fellow slots—one in conjunction with each university.
The Washington Association of Coroners and Medical Examiners must report its findings and recommendations to the governor and the appropriate committees by Oct. 1, 2024.
Notably, the failed SB 5776 commissioned the same study, with recommendations initially slated for December 2022. However, that is where the similarities end for the two bills. The initial SB 5776 did not include a loan forgiveness program. Instead, it sought to create a death investigation resource center that would develop best practices for the state. The center would also identify localized and statewide violence and death trends, develop systems to facilitate information and data sharing between medical examiner and coroner offices, and survey medical examiners and coroners to identify critical needs.
Washington is not the only state experiencing this problem. Last year, Maryland’s chief medical examiner asked the federal government for help managing a backlog of more than 200 bodies awaiting autopsies. It was a similar story in Georgia, where the director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) called it “a challenge” to station a medical examiner in GBI’s Macon office, despite offering an extra $20,000. GBI Director Vic Reynolds even tried working with local Mercer University to attract a qualified forensic pathologist, but was unsuccessful.