Jay, what more can the coroner do to ensure records are open to the public while being sensitive to families of the dead?
This is an area where the Arapahoe County Coroner’s office needs real reform. Because the current Coroner has only medical training, he cannot understand the finer points of the legal processes regarding patient privilege.
Currently, there is little or no information being passed along to funeral directors about the deceased. The excuse for this false secrecy is “patient privilege”. The current Coroner has no legal training, so he doesn’t know that the privacy privilege of a patient is terminated when that patient dies. Under the law, every deceased which comes into the Coroner’s office comes there without that privilege.
Why do funeral directors, police officers, firemen (and potentially the family of the deceased) need current, accurate medical information? It is simple. There are occasions when the deceased died from virulent communicable diseases, from aids, and even from poisoning from agents that will remain at lethal levels within the body for days or years.
The funeral directors shouldn’t have to guess at the cause of death, or whether it is even safe to drive the deceased to the funeral home without extraordinary precautions. Funeral directors deal with body fluids and tissues, and they are exposed to whatever killed the deceased.
Further, the funeral directors should be informed so that they can discreetly warn the visitors to the casket that they shouldn’t embrace the body, or otherwise come into contact with it in some circumstances.
It is clear that discretion should be exercised by the Coroner in releasing sensitive medical information, but as to the family and others who come into contact with the body, safety must take a front seat in the process.
Further, the very shortened office hours of the current Coroner limits the public access to public records. Currently, the office is open only from 7-4, closed for lunch, closed weekends, closed holidays, and so on. The drivers license office does better than that. The first step to providing reasonable access to public records is to have office hours that are calculated to allow the public reasonable access to a live human being who can help them get what they need.
