San Diego County Medical Examiner's Office

This place is absolutely despicable. I will never trust bringing another loved one here again. The doctor who worked on my father admitted to me over the phone that he never performed an autopsy on my father due to a positive nasal swab for covid-19. In their opinion they didn't believe an autopsy was necessary. How negligent can you be? When I asked for an autopsy to be done I was told that I would have to hand over $8,000 for them to do another exam when all they did in the first one was a nasal swab. I ended up never getting the real cause of death because an autopsy and toxicology were never performed. Just an assumed cause of death from covid-19 complications. I will always wonder what my fathers true cause of death was, but unfortunately I have to be okay with the fact that I will never know. I hope in the future they will keep in mind the lasting impact they are causing. It is sad that they seem to not care at all about the deceased's persons families.

I had a chance to attend training here and interact with some of the M.E. staff. First off, it's a very nice building that they're in. I can see where some of our tax dollars have gone. Secondly, all of the staff that I had a chance to meet were super folks. Dealing with dead people for a living takes a certain special personality, and these folks bring it. Lastly, I want to comment on the parking - they have at least one parking garage with ample parking, but it's about three blocks away. I hope you don't have to visit the M.E. soon, but if you do, I'm confident you'll be taken care of the right way.

The examiner put the wrong name on my partners death certificate. For the rest of my life I will have to see a name on a death certificate that is not him . An amendment is being made but it does not remove the mistaken name on the main page . The medical examiner supervisor is ignoring my calls to ask her for sone kind of accountability . I hope they don't have this happen to them when they have a death in the family .

According to their County website, The Medical Examiner's Office was originally "started with the County in 1850 as a Coroner system, and in 1990 it was converted to a Medical Examiner's system. The major difference between the two systems is that a Medical Examiner must be a forensic pathologist. While the Medical Examiner works with all of the law enforcement agencies in the county (San Diego Sheriff's Office, San Diego Police Department, etc.) and the District Attorneys Office," they are completely separate from them. Currently housed in a facility in the Kearny Mesa, I have buried both my parents and the County Medical Examiner oversaw both cases. I have no complaints with their work.

If you call them up during business hours, you can request they email or snail mail you a public records copy of any autopsy or medical examiner's report. Even though this office is one of the more gruesome of County Offices, they seem to be doing a good job and are at least accessible and helpful to the public at large. Though not a morbid person normally, I have to give props to the Medical Examiner's Office for doing a thorough job, overall.

Today, we had an office-wide training put on by the SD County Medical Examiner's Office. We covered their duties, typical injuries resulting in death, and issues surrounding death cases. Most importantly, we found out that the cold storage room that holds the corpses locks from the outside. We were all very concerned about the escape of reanimated corpses in a zombie apocalypse. I can affirmatively state that SD County is well ahead of this dreadful epidemic.