Panhandle Loses Medical Examiner

The counties in the Texas Panhandle got a bit of bad news yesterday. As of September 1st, they will no longer have access to the services of a medical examiner. The Panhandle counties have been contracting with the Texas Tech Health Sciences Center who ran the medical examiner's office in Lubbock (about 100 miles south of Amarillo).

But on Tuesday, Texas Tech informed Lubbock County that the school will terminate those services at the end of this month. The medical examiner's office had recently been the subject of several complaints to the Texas Medical Board.

This means the entire Panhandle and South Plains area will be without a medical examiner. The closest ME in Texas would be in Fort Worth -- about 350 miles away. That's just too far away, even if an arrangement could be worked out.

Lubbock County needs to get together with Potter County and Randall County (who are home to Amarillo), and get something worked out. The three counties together have around a half-million people, and that's without counting the people in the other counties of the Panhandle and South Plains. That is a large enough population base to support a new medical examiner's office.

It wouldn't matter whether the office was located in Lubbock or Amarillo. The two cities are close enough to share an office. But if they didn't want to share anymore, each city is large enough with their surrounding counties to operate their own office.

While I think an office in each city is viable, I think it's more likely they will continue to share. Either way, they need to act quickly. There isn't much time.

Update - Well, I screwed up. As the commenter said, I didn't read the story closely enough. The office will close in 2009 and not 2008. That's good, because the area now has a year to solve the problem.