NYC’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in danger of ‘collapsing,’ doctors say

July 19, 2024 Brooklyn Eagle Staff

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CITYWIDE — EXPERIENCED DOCTORS ARE LEAVING NYC’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner (OCME) and the agency is in danger of collapsing, forensic pathologists represented by Doctors Council SEIU said in a letter to Mayor Eric Adams on Thursday. “It has become impossible to retain and recruit critically needed OCME staff as a result of low pay and the failure of the New York City Office of Labor Relations to renew a 2018 memorandum of agreement that expired over 3 years ago made with the intention of avoiding this current city-wide crisis,” the doctors said in the letter. Medical Examiners in NYC are some of the lowest-paid in the country, the doctors said.

Since the agreement funding the physicians expired in 2021, OCME has lost 23 of its 32 full-time Medical Examiners and anticipates losing six more in the immediate future, according to the letter.

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