The office of Alberta’s chief medical examiner completed just three per cent of cases within its targeted timeline of 60 days last year because of a significant backlog and staffing shortages – issues that the provincial government says it is now moving to address.
Alberta Justice, in its 2023-24 annual report released last week, said the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner (OCME) fell far below its target of 20 per cent of cases being completed in 60 days. This is the third fiscal year in a row where the office has failed to meet its goal, completing only 10 per cent of cases within the same time frame in 2022-23 and 11 per cent in 2021-22.
Efforts have been made to improve the situation, but many families remain stuck for months in limbo waiting for answers on their loved one’s death. The delay also stalls the collection of public health data that can help raise the alarm on growing public health issues and prevent deaths.
Toxicology testing, for example, can determine which drugs are driving deaths in the community. Alberta’s own drug-use dashboard that tracks unintentional overdose deaths relies in part on medical examiners’ reports, but it’s sometimes not updated for months.
The annual report, which covers April 1, 2023, to March 31, concluded that a steady increase in cases since 2020, driven in part by COVID-19 and record-high drug poisonings, has created the backlog. Death investigations are now taking, on average, nine months to complete. Any case that has not been completed within nine months is considered part of the backlog.
There were 1,438 backlogged cases in 2023, according to the justice ministry, which is nearly four times higher than the year prior where 374 cases were considered as part of the backlog. In 2021, there were 109, and in 2020, there were 143.
Chinenye Anokwuru, senior press secretary to Justice Minister Mickey Amery, said in a statement that medical examiners’ caseloads have increased in recent years because of population growth and a spike in certain types of deaths, in particular opioid-related fatalities.
“Despite the types of deaths under OCME’s purview increasing, it should be noted that in the first quarter of 2024, from January to March, the OCME started to decrease its backlog case numbers for the first time in approximately four years,” she said.
“This is in part due to hiring more medical examiners, which has helped reduce the heavy workloads per medical examiner and is enabling backlog cases and new cases to be completed in a timelier manner.”
Ms. Anokwuru said additional funding from the province will include the hiring of two full-time toxicology technologists and six new medical and non-medical staff. She said there are currently eight medical examiners and “several more” have been hired and will begin in the coming months.
The number of staff needed to complete a death investigation depends on the specifics of a case.
More than 3,700 cases, which involved autopsies or paperwork reviews and diagnostic imaging, have been completed during the first half of this year by the OCME, data provided by the ministry show. Nearly 6,500 cases were completed in 2023 (91.5 per cent of cases opened that year) and roughly 5,550 in 2022 (85 per cent of cases opened that year).
Alberta’s OCME has long been plagued with issues.
The office came under fire in 2019 after a video surfaced that showed a purported funeral home employee roughly handling a corpse that was being stored in a refrigerated truck trailer, which the OCME was using to store dead bodies after a sudden spike in cases. (Trailers are not being used currently,)
Not long after, chief medical examiner Elizabeth Brooks-Lim resigned from her post citing personal reasons, marking the third departure in just five years. Dr. Brooks-Lim was appointed in December, 2016, after her predecessor, Jeffrey Gofton, quit about halfway through his three-year tenure to take a job in the United States.
His predecessor Anny Sauvageau sued the Alberta government for wrongful dismissal, alleging her contract was not renewed because of political interference. She ended up receiving no payment for settling the case.
The office did experience some stability after Thambirajah Balachandra, a retired former top pathologist in Manitoba, took on the role in 2020. Akmal Coetzee-Khan was appointed to the role last November after Dr. Balachandra’s tenure ended.
Editor’s note: In an earlier version of this story, the government provided an incorrect figure for the current number of medical examiners. This version has been corrected.
With a report from The Canadian Press