It was Eckels who ordered the audit of the Medical Examiner's Office after questions were raised about the pathologists receiving extra income for private autopsies. Eckels favors abolishing the practice and seeing that pathologists' salaries cover their extra work. The audit also showed that the Medical Examiner's Office is seriously deficient when it comes to computerization. One former county official says Jachimczyk even resisted placing his employees on the county's computerized payroll system. Eckels wants to bring the office on-line.
He's also considering more sweeping changes. One idea Eckels is entertaining is the creation of a regional medical examiner's office to ensure that other counties pay their fair share of tests and autopsies, which the audit suggests they currently are not doing. Eckels also has given thought to privatizing some duties of the office, such as farming out pediatric autopsies to Texas Children's Hospital.
"Everything concerning the Medical Examiner's Office is on the table," says Eckels.
Meanwhile, Jachimczyk's replacement is not expected to be picked until the release next month of another review of the office by outside auditor Peat Marwick.
The 13-member selection committee appointed by Eckels and other members of Commissioners Court has been screening applicants, and three candidates already have been brought into Houston for face-to-face interviews. They are Vincent Di Maio, the chief medical examiner for Bexar County who reviewed the Kibble autopsies; Jeffery Barnard, Dallas County's chief medical examiner; and Joye Carter, the chief medical examiner of Washington, D.C. Carter, according to one member of the search committee, was especially impressive during her visit earlier this month. She was said to have been dismayed to learn that the assistant medical examiners receive extra money for private autopsies.
That there is at one least candidate for the job who looks askance at the double dipping is encouraging to Holmes. But the district attorney believes that Eckels may be engaging in micromanagement by trying to address the problems at the M.E.'s Office himself.
"Does [Eckels] want to be the M.E. and run it or do you want to hire somebody to do that?" asks the district attorney. "If I'm a commissioner, I'm not going to tell that person how to run the M.E.'s Office. First of all, I'm not qualified to. I wouldn't use this to install my particular philosophy in the Medical Examiner's Office. What you need to look for, and what I am looking for, is someone with the kind of talents, management skills and ability to take an office of that nature and run it in a responsible and appropriate manner."
But Eckels says now is the time for Harris County to determine precisely what kind of operation it wants.
"The people who are working the hardest on the search committee are the people who are going to be using the services the most," he says. "We want those groups to feel like they have a Medical Examiner's Office that is user-friendly and is in a partnership with those offices."
These days, the anxiety reportedly is high at the morgue as employees await the naming of Jachimczyk's replacement. "About half the people around here want the new medical examiner to shake things up," says the head of one division in the office, "and the other half doesn't. I want somebody to come in here and clean house.
