County Coroner Drowning in Paper

Pickens County Coroner Kandy Kelley needs help.

Last year, she worked 718 deaths.

“The year before it was 603 and already this year I've had about 230 deaths that I've had to handle,” Kelley said.

Kelley recently spoke to County Council and County Administrator Chappell Hurst, asking them to fund an administrative assistant position for her office. She's asked for such a position in the past but was told there were no funds available.

She said she's working between 60-80 hours a week currently.

“I'm really concerned about my office and what will happen if I keel over,” Kelley said. “I very strongly feel that I need a full-time position and not a part-time position. I need someone that I can train, that can take over a lot of this stuff for me and, honestly, if something happened to me, would be able to help the next person that comes in.”

County Council Chairman Neil Smith asked for more information on the proposed position.

“This position is an administrative position, not as much the medical side and understanding that,” Smith said. “If you decided not to run for reelection, then that person would then help whoever would come in.”

Kelley said she has space at the Coroner's Office for the new hire, if approved.

She said that, as coroner, she is struggling with unfunded mandates from the state.

A deputy coroner covers for Kelley eight days a month, she said.

“I have eight nights of sleep a month that I'm pretty much guaranteed,” Kelley said. “But on the days he's working, I'm still doing paperwork. I'm still trying to catch up.”

Other county coroner's have several deputy coroners, in additional to administrative staff.

Kelley said she's worked more deaths than Oconee County Coroner Karl Addis this year.

“The last time I talked to him, I was a hundred to two hundred above him,” she said. “And he has staff.”

“Look at the numbers,” said Councilwoman Jennifer Willis. “In 2009, she had 500. She's on pace to do close to 1,000 this year, based on what's she done in the first quarter. That's double in five years with no added staff.”

Kelley's been doing a lot of education lately, she said.

Kelley has been working with local EMS, “to make sure that they do what they need to with documentation and at the scenes of the deaths.”

She's also working with local anatomy and physiology classes.

“I'm relating my job with what they might be doing,” Kelley said. “I show them pictures of autopsies so they can see what the body looks like from the inside, showing them children that have died from alcohol poisoning, drug overdoses, teaching them not to sleep with their babies – so their babies don't die.”

Kelley has to sign off on all cremations done in Pickens County.

Cremations now account for 30 percent of funeral arrangements in the county, she said.

“So the cremation is putting more work on you than what it used to,” Smith said.

She said more people are opting for cremations due to the economy.

She said that, as coroner, she is struggling with unfunded mandates from the state.

Every time someone dies, Kelley has to collect their medications.

She brought with her a large amount of medication to show council.

“This is just three-four months' worth of pills,” Kelley said.

Another employee would help her deal with that requirement as well as some of the other paperwork Kelley has to deal with.

“This takes probably twenty hours of counting and documenting,” she said.

Due to the Child Fatality Act, coroners must order autopsies when a child dies. That act requires that every child under the age of 18 must be autopsied.

Kelley was to do reenactments, conduct the investigation, work with SLED, subpoena all medical records.

“Completely investigate each child,” she said.

“As soon as we get through at the hospital, I take baby dolls and I go out,” Kelley said. “The parents have to place the baby (doll.) It's videotaped as the baby was put to sleep and it's videotaped as the baby was found. A lot of times, this presents our case as to how the baby died.”

Another regulation requires the Coroner's Office to investigate if someone dies in a hospital following any invasive procedure.

“There are coroners who say that if the person has an injection mark from the hospital, that's invasive and we're supposed to investigate,” Kelley said. “If a person dies in a hospital, then we're supposed to transport to another hospital, because they don't want the medical examiner or the forensic pathologist to be tainted at all in their decision making. It's changing who we investigate.”

Medical doctors can only sign death certificates for natural deaths, Kelley said.

“Anything else, I have to be involved in and investigating,” she said. “Even if it's a fall down, bump their head, or break their hip or whatever, it's a coroner's case.”

But some doctors are refusing to sign any death certificates, increasing Kelley's workload.

“I'm having to sign a lot more,” she said.

She said families suffer if she doesn't sign a death certificate.

“You cannot bury your relative if you don't have a death certificate,” Smith said.

“Why are (doctors) doing that?” Councilman Trey Whitehurst said.

“Because they can,” she said. “Because they're scared of the liability.”

Smith asked what would happen if the county was able to fund a part-time position, not a full-time one.

“It's just going to take care of a little bit,” Kelley said. “I need someone to help me more than three days a week.”

She said full-time work would attract the right people.

“They need to be engaged in it like I'm engaged in it. You know my heart,” she told council. “This is my baby. I need to find somebody that it's their baby also.”

Smith said that pay was an issue, but part-time work would probably would result in more turnover.

Smith said the county has seen tremendous growth regarding what the coroner handles compared to when he was on council in the 1980s.

“We were in the eighteenth century,” he said. “We've been trying to catch up over the years. We're trying to get you there. That job is so different today than it was 10 years ago.”

Officials asked Kelley to create a job description for the proposed position.