Franklin County names Dr. Andrea McCollom acting coroner; Democrats to choose successor
Franklin County has a new county coroner, at least temporarily.
The county Board of Commissioners on Thursday appointed Dr. Andrea McCollom as acting coroner, nearly a week after the departure of Dr. Anahi Ortiz, a pediatrician who retired Nov. 11 after eight years heading the office, ahead of a consultant's review and after a Dispatch investigation showed millions spent to shore up operations.
A forensic pathologist who completed her residency in 1997, McCollom has worked as a deputy coroner in Franklin County since Sept. 30, according to details provided to the commissioners. She said she is one of three pathologists who recently came to Franklin County from Cuyahoga County, in Cleveland, where she previously served for 24 years as a deputy coroner/medical examiner.
McCollom's tenure in Cuyahoga County also included seven months as interim medical examiner, when the county switched from an elected coroner to an appointed medical examiner. She also taught clinical pathology at Case Western Reserve University's School of Medicine.
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McCollom will temporarily succeed Ortiz, who announced she was leaving to spend more time with family out of state. In accordance with the Ohio Revised Code, the Franklin County Democratic Central Committee will select a permanent successor in December to serve the rest of Ortiz's term, which expires Jan. 5, 2025.
On Thursday, McCollom told The Dispatch she has no plans to take the job on a more permanent basis because she does not live in Franklin County and going from deputy coroner to coroner would amount to a decrease in pay.
"As a forensic pathologist, it's a detriment to be a coroner," she said, noting the latter involves much more responsibility for "half the pay."
According to the Ohio Revised Code, coroners in counties with populations of more than 1 million who also have their own private practice will make $96,755 in 2023. Those who do not have their own private practice will earn $155,348.
The leadership change comes as a Las Vegas-based firm is conducting a $115,500 study of the organizational structure, efficiency, effectiveness, transparency, decision-making and accountability of the coroner's office. It also will assess whether current resources meet the office's needs and its leaders have the skills needed to meet its goals; interview staff and shadow some of them; and recommend any staffing changes to boost effectiveness.
A recent investigation by The Dispatch showed that during the first 10 months of 2022, the county authorized spending $3.2 million in taxpayers' money to deal with a staffing shortage after four of the county's five forensic pathologists quit in January. Three now work for or operate their own private pathology companies in Dayton, Toledo and North Carolina. The fourth now works for Vermont's chief medical examiner.
"The reason I left is because I felt the coroner's office had become a poor work environment due to poor leadership," Dr. Maneesha Pandey told The Dispatch previously. Pandey now works as chief forensic pathologist for The Forensic Pathologists LLC, a private practice based in suburban Toledo.
The departures forced Franklin County to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on contracts with Montgomery and Hamilton counties as well as independent pathologists to perform autopsies in order to keep up and to have pathologists available to testify in criminal court cases. Some family and survivors also complained about delays with autopsy reports that took weeks and months longer to be completed.
After the departures, Ortiz's office focused on recruitment efforts, increasing salaries for pathologists by tens of thousands of dollars a year amid a nationwide shortage of pathologists. Now, with a nearly full staff of six full-time pathologists and a pathology assistant, the county is able to handle all of its own autopsies, according to the office.
Before she left herself, Ortiz, through the office's media spokesperson, declined a request from The Dispatch for an interview about her eight-year tenure as the county's official death investigator.
Ortiz tackled rising overdose deaths, gun violence during tenure
Not long after taking office in 2014, Ortiz began noticing an unprecedented rise in overdose deaths and set out to do something about it.
A year later, she gathered various stakeholders, including representatives from city and county health departments, public defenders and prosecutors, the Ohio Board of Pharmacy, law enforcement and treatment facilities, to find gaps in the system and assess ways how deaths could have been prevented.
In 2020, she partnered with Columbus City Attorney Zach Klein and U.S. Attorney David DeVillers to raise awareness about the rise in fentanyl-related overdoses in the county.
Ortiz also was among the first local public officials to suggest a city or county Office of Violence Prevention to tackle the growing gun violence in Franklin County, two years before Columbus Mayor Andrew J. Ginther included it in his 2023 budget proposal.
nshuda@dispatch.com
@NathanielShuda
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Franklin County's acting coroner was a medical examiner in Cleveland
