OLATHE, Kan. — In 2016, voters of Johnson County passed a Law Enforcement Sales Tax that’s paying for a new courthouse and a medical examiner’s office.
It’s a one-of-a-kind facility that will serve not only Johnson County, but eventually, the region.
Johnson County Medical Examiner Dr. Diane Peterson has been working to build, staff and develop policies for this state of the art medical examiner’s office for a year and a half.
Slated to begin operation at the end of July, it will be the first time in the county’s history it hasn’t relied on a private coroner for autopsies.
It’s one of few ME facilities in the country to have a CT scanner and the only facility in Kansas or Missouri to have Lodox full body x-ray technology.
“Bullets won’t be able to hide just off x-ray,” Peterson said. “We will be able to see all edges of the body and know exactly where a bullet is, for example.”
Law enforcement officers often witness autopsies, and at Johnson County’s new facility, they can be in an observation area instead of right in the room.
“Perhaps the smells or the sound bother them and they prefer not to be within this area,” Peterson said of visitors being in the autopsy rooms. “When we’re doing that, they can be removed a little bit but still get the information that they need.”
In 2019, 400 autopsies were performed for Johnson County, and 12 of them were homicides.
By having its own medical examiner, the county will be able to identify trends in emerging disease outbreaks, abuse and addiction.
Plus, it can help improve the thoroughness of death investigations. Peterson has 4 full-time investigators who go to every death scene.
“We have a different idea than what law enforcement does.” Peterson said. “We are out there looking for what caused the death and what was the manner of death, which is the circumstances around the death, whereas law enforcement has a different view, either looking to see if it is a criminal act and, if so, who did it.”
Testing will be done at an in-house lab, which will go a long way in reducing the amount of time it takes to complete autopsy reports and issuing death certificates.
“So the overarching goal of the whole office is to become name accredited with the National Association of Medical Examiners,” Peterson said. “And with that accreditation comes a particular turnaround time that I have to meet.”
To meet that goal, Peterson must get 90% of her cases turned around in 60 days. There is nothing to compare that to in Johnson County since this is the first time the county has had this sort of service.
