Just to clarify, I think your concerns about University Pathologists are valid and that it's a troubling situation. I don't think the analogy to KTSC goes much beyond both organizations being county vendors. For starters, as a nonprofit, KTSC meets transparency and oversight standards U.P. would likely scoff at. The motivations of for-profit companies are very different, tempting them to do things like use Knox Co resources for Loudon Co autopsies without compensating Knox Co.

In the KTSC discussion on the Blab, Scott Barker said a 2010 court decision determined that Corrections Corp of America is subject to many of the same open records and meetings laws as government agencies, since CCA is wholly dependent on government contracts. That would seem to apply to U.P. as well, which could be very useful in any sort of audit or investigation.

Does anyone know the significance that government contract work comprises of University Pathologists' revenue? CCA is a public company with a specific customer type, so that one is obvious.

The answer doesn't affect the legal or common decency issues raised by the original post and letter, but I'm just curious if tax dollars represent 10, 50 or 80 percent of their top line.

EconoGal - that's a very interesting question, and one I've tried to figure out with no success. If anyone with better research skills than mine knows how to figure that out, please let me know.

Katie

This 2011 investigative reporting out of Northern California looked at a situation in which a single private, for profit contractor was handling almost all forensic pathology work for a large number of counties in one region:

(link...)

The reporters discovered caseloads far exceeding professional standards, one-off autopsies being accepted as single pay incidents - incentivizing inappropriately high caseloads - and a variety of other problems.

I am not a reporter, but instead just a citizen who has had the unfortunate opportunity to recently require the services of this (nearly) million dollar Knox County contractor. A real reporter could probably get a much clearer picture of all of this, but via the scant publicly available info I could find, it appears that in our area, University Pathologists currently serves as the primary provider of forensic pathology services (autopsies, case consultation, trial testimony, medicolegal death investigation, etc) for not only Knox County, but for multiple other East Tennessee counties. University Pathologists appears to perform almost all its forensic pathology work in the same lab, using much of the same staff and equipment that they also use in execution of their $970,000 annual contract to serve as the Office of the Knox County Medical Examiner.

There are significant questions with regard to this contract and how its being executed and overseen. If I were a local journalist, I would have a strong interest in taking a much closer look.

But while some of the potential problems with this Knox County contractor really call out or a professional journalist's analysis, others are so obvious that they are just right out there for anyone who bothers to look.

For example, in the letter to Knox County Commission to which I linked in my original post above

(Find it here: (link...))

I noted several specific and highly disturbing examples (with the actual screenshots of media websites displaying the photos included) of University Pathologists allowing local media to photograph human remains in the ME's lab, and to publish those photos. This shocking behavior is specifically prohibited in the contract between Knox County and University Pathologists, and also represents a clear violation of a state law prohibiting local medical examiners from allowing media to photograph human remains entrusted to their care.

It's pretty awful stuff, and forensic pathology is not an area of county services that anyone likes to think about. We all kind of just want to assume that when it comes to this uniquely sensitive tax-funded service, the people we've contracted to do it are handling those duties as they should. But some bereaved local families have found out the hard way that without oversight, that's not what's going on.