ORS 146.075 District office duties; personnel; expenses for certain duties; records and reports

The district medical examiner shall serve as the administrator of the district medical examiner’s office. Subject to applicable provisions of a county personnel policy or civil service law, the district medical examiner may employ such other personnel as the district medical examiner deems necessary to operate the office.

All expenses of equipping, maintaining and operating the district medical examiner’s office, including the compensation of the district medical examiner and assistant district medical examiners, shall be paid by the county or counties of the district from funds budgeted for such purpose.

When a district medical examiner also serves as local health officer, the county shall separately budget the compensation and expenses to be paid for medical examiner’s duties.

All expenses of death investigations shall be paid from county funds budgeted for such purpose except that, in counties under 200,000 population upon the approval of the Chief Medical Examiner, one-half of the costs of autopsies ordered under ORS 146.117 shall be paid annually by the state from funds for such purpose. If funds available for this payment are insufficient to meet one-half of these costs, even proportional payments to the counties shall be made.

Expenses of burial or other disposition of an unclaimed body shall be paid by the county where the death occurs, as provided by ORS 146.100 (2), in the manner provided by ORS 146.121 (4).

Each district office shall maintain copies of the:

Reports of death investigation by the medical examiner;

Autopsy reports;

Laboratory analysis reports; and

Inventories of money or property of the deceased taken into custody during the investigation.

Reports and inventories maintained by the district office shall be available for inspection as provided by ORS 146.035 (5).

Copies of reports of death investigations by medical examiners and autopsy reports shall be forwarded to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.

Each district office shall maintain current records of:

All assistant district medical examiners appointed.

Appointments of each medical-legal death investigator appointed for the county or district.

The name, address and director of each licensed funeral home located within the county or district.

Each district office shall immediately in writing notify the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner of all appointments and resignations of their medical examiners.