NASHVILLE — After 33 years of service, Hamilton County’s 5,812-square-foot Medical Examiner’s Office building is no longer adequate to meet today’s demands, officials say.
Forensic doctors and staff are housed in the cramped space while also battling heating, air, refrigeration and safety issues as well as other problems at the aging facility amid rising demands for services, officials say. The office on Amnicola Highway also lacks capacity to assist nearby counties with investigations and autopsies to determine causes of death in areas ranging from infectious diseases like COVID-19 to homicides.
But that’s expected to change with the help of money from Uncle Sam.
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee and top state lawmakers are finalizing plans to use $10 million from the state’s pool of remaining federal American Rescue Plan Act dollars to pay most of the costs of a proposal from Hamilton County government for support to build a new, $13.8 million, 14,244-square-foot state-of-the art facility.
The county would kick in $3.8 million of the total cost in the form of equipment purchases and donation of property to house the new facility.
It’s intended to be the new home of a vital operation that determines causes of death and issues death certificates while also helping to uncover disease outbreaks and reveal murders.
Tennessee government is using federal money from the $230 million State Resiliency Plan officials created out of the total $3.9 billion Tennessee received from the American Rescue Plan, approved by Democrats in Congress in 2021.
Last week, Lee and other members of the state’s Financial Stimulus Accountability Group discussed the project. Group members include the Senate and House speakers as well as Senate Finance Committee Chairman Bo Watson, R-Hixson, and House Finance Committee Chairwoman Patsy Hazlewood, R-Signal Mountain.
Staff Photo by Matt Hamilton / The Hamilton County Medical Examiner’s Office is pictured on Friday.Interim state Health Commissioner Dr. Morgan McDonald told officials there’s no question the county’s forensic center needs more space.
“Hamilton’s been limited by really that facility’s capacity in its ability to provide regional services, so that regional function goes outside Hamilton County to Nashville,” McDonald said of the current situation, adding officials hope a new facility will enable Hamilton County to pick up other nearby counties’ medical examinations needs.
In theory, the Hamilton County Medical Examiner’s Office is one of five forensic centers serving the state. Reality shows the county facility has not been capable of doing so in recent years.
“The current facility was constructed in 1989 and really has exceeded its useful life,” McDonald said. “It’s an old building, (needing) constant repair for HVAC, and the cooling system in particular as well as water are pretty much beyond repair at this point. The facility size and the space really do hinder its service delivery.”
Watson told panel members the project has been vetted robustly.
“It’s been through a number of iterations to get it down to the best proposal” and it meets the “template asked of others,” Watson said. He said the pandemic really demonstrated the need for additional capacity from both a physical and lab perspective.
Hazlewood agreed.
“This is something that has been vetted, we have talked about it a great deal and there’s definitely a need,” she said. “And by doing this, it will also take some of the load from Nashville, which now has to pick up the capacity.”
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A final decision is expected to come at the fiscal group’s next meeting.
“I welcome the state’s commitment to provide $10 million to help build a new, larger, state-of-the-art regional forensics center to replace the decades-old building that houses our current Medical Examiner’s Office,” Hamilton County Mayor Weston Wamp said Friday in a statement to the Chattanooga Times Free Press. “A recent tour of the facility with Sen. Bo Watson and other state officials convinced me of the need for a new facility to meet the growing needs of the county while also allowing us to serve the surrounding counties as a regional center.”
Tim Carroll, the Hamilton County Medical Examiner Office’s assistant office manager and chief deputy investigator, was involved in putting together the county’s funding application. He said in a phone interview Thursday that a new facility is definitely needed, ticking off a number of problems the operation now faces in areas ranging from space to safety and more.
“We have absolutely outgrown it,” Carroll said.
Staff Photo by Matt Hamilton / The Hamilton County Medical Examiner’s Office is pictured on Friday.The volume of examinations have quadrupled, he added, with fentanyl overdoses leading the way.
Meanwhile, Carroll said, “Our office doesn’t have a negative air pressure area for contagious disease.”
The rooms are used for infection control for diseases in bodies brought to the office.
“That was another concern for why we needed a new building, because of infectious disease and decomposition cases that go to infectious disease areas for exam and autopsy,” Carroll said. “It really is a safety issue for personnel.”
Air-conditioning breakdowns are a frequent occurrence. Due to lack of space, Carroll said, he largely uses his vehicle as his office. And then there is a monthly battle that exterminators must fight with ants.
The facility can only hold a dozen bodies, Carroll said. During the pandemic, the county leased two refrigerator containers and currently has access to another container configured to hold 20 bodies.
The need dipped but is now rising again with narcotic fentanyl overdoses a big factor, Carroll said.
Carroll said the building can “hardly hold what we got,” but with funding and a new larger facility, officials can consider serving Bradley, Grundy, Marion, Sequatchie, Rhea and other nearby counties that don’t have county medical offices to handle cases and are now relying on the state or Knox County.
“We’re doing 21st century work in a location held together by a Band-Aid building,” Carroll said.
Contact Andy Sher at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @AndySher1.