Regional morgue nears completion in Wausau
By Kevin O’Brien
With construction nearly complete on Marathon County’s new regional forensic science center, the county board is poised to transform the medical examiner’s office into one run by physicians conducting on-site autopsies for over 20 counties in northeast Wisconsin.
Medical examiner Jessica Blahnik, who will become director of operations at the new center, spoke to a pair of committees last week about plans to transition from the current operation to a physician-led medical examiner’s office as of May 25. That is the starting date of the new chief medical examiner, one of two forensic pathologists recently hired to run autopsies at the facility (the deputy chief will start July 28).
“They are both incredible, and we are so fortunate to have their talents and expertise within our community,” Blahnik said.
The 20,000-square-foot center is currently being built on land next to the Wausau campus of Northcentral Technical College, which sold land to the county for $400,000 last year. To offset the purchase price, NTC is providing technology upgrades and IT support as in-kind donations.
Blahnik said the construction project is on track to be finished in June, allowing the medical examiner’s staff to move into the new facility sometime in July. Because the county will be switching to a physician-led office, she said most of the current position titles will need to change, but the pay scales will remain the same.
Once the department moves into the new facility, Blahnik said they will start off slowly by mostly doing autopsies from Marathon County, with a few select cases from other counties, before expanding their caseload. Before the move, they will be doing some incounty autopsies at a suite leased at Marshfield Medical Center’s Weston location.
The county’s goal is to have the new medical examiner’s office be as financially self-sufficient as possible by charging other counties and hospitals for autopsy services. A resolution recommended to the county board calls for increasing fee revenues by just over $137,000 this year and adding about the same amount for additional costs, primarily the pathologists’ salaries.
County administrator Lance Leonhard said both Blahnik and the new chief medical examiner will report to him, with Blahnik overseeing the budget and overall operations while the medical examiner focuses on autopsies Leonhard said the new medical examiner’s office will be more like an enterprise fund, similar to the county’s landfill and airport, but he doesn’t expect it to be fully selfsufficient.
“If these facilities made money, more counties would probably do it,” he said. “They generally don’t make money.”
