Policies and Procedures

The following list of policies and procedures concerning the operations of the Spokane County Medical Examiner's Office has been established in the interest of maintaining high quality and efficient service to the public. The authority to establish policy within the Medical Examiner's Office  rests with the Acting Medical Examiner. All policies and procedures have been established, reviewed and signed by both Spokane County Medical Examiners and are to be reviewed and acknowledged as being current every two years.

• Accepting and releasing bodies
• Acquisition of hospital clinical specimen
• Admonition opposing autopsy
• Assuming jurisdiction
• Body transport and handling
• Bomb Threat
• Case records case files and paperwork flow
• Certification of cause and manner of death
• Chain of evidence
• Collecting fluids samples tissues for toxicologic testing
• Collection of evidence at autopsy in suspicious deaths
• Complete limited and external autopsies
• Confidentiality
• Consumer product safety
• Database and report writing
• Decedent's Medications
• Definition of deaths reportable to the ME office
• Digital Dental X-ray
• Driver's Licenses, Notes, Address Books and Like Items: Handle as Property or Evidence
• Enactment & use of new policy and procedure manual
• Examination of human bite marks
• Facility and equipment maintenance
• Firearms at scenes of investigation
• Guidelines on human organ and tissue procurement
• Home HC Hospice Nursing Facility reporting of death
• Identification
• Infectious waste mgmt Infectious disease prevention
• Investigations
• Making information available to the press and the public
• Managment of decedent's personal property
• Mass Fatality Management Plan
• Medical Examiner Support Services
• Medical Examiner Truck Use and Maintenance
• Medical Investigator response to scene
• Notification of next of kin
• Outside consultations of ME samples
• Paging system quality assurance
• Performance Improvement Program
• Personal Vehicle Use and Gasoline Reimbursement
• Personnel Discipline and Termination
• Personnel Corrective Action
• Photographs and Digital Images
• Postmortem examination attendance log
• Postmortem examination
• Procedures in outside county cases
• Professional dress standards
• Receiving of gifts and making of endorsements
• Records management and archiving
• Regularly scheduled meetings
• Release of unclaimed indigent remains
• Release of information
• Req for testing related to potential biohazard exposure
• Request for paternity testing
• Requests for autopsies
• Safety and safety committee
• Scientific and optical equipment maintenance
• Security
• Skeletal remains
• Special procedures in childhood death
• Storage retention and disposal of items of evidence
• Suicide notes
• Supervisory Roles
• Viewing of bodies at hospital or forensic institute
• Who can pronounce death who can sign a death certificate
• X-ray examination