Polk County may close its morgue and merge with state facility

Catch up quick: Polk County has been considering ways to address the overcrowded and outdated medical examiner facilities at Broadlawns Medical Center for years.

• Meanwhile, Iowa plans to construct a $36 million expansion of the Iowa Office of the State Medical Examiner (IOSME) in Ankeny over the next three years.

Zoom in: Forensic pathologists at IOSME already conduct autopsies for nearly all the state's 99 counties.

• They also performed all of Polk County's autopsies for a year starting in October 2022, when local officials could not hire a medical examiner quickly.

State of play: Under a draft plan, Polk County would maintain its medical examiner and death investigation staff, but postmortem exams would shift to the state's facilities in Ankeny, Supervisors Chairperson Matt McCoy tells Axios.

• The move would save the county as much as $25 million in potentially building its own new facility, he said.

The other side: Supervisor Tom Hockensmith tells Axios that Polk's work has traditionally made local death investigations quicker and more efficient.

• Supervisor Angela Connolly believes the space at Broadlawns could be updated for much less than the estimates used by advocates like McCoy.
• "Their (savings) narrative is just false," Connolly tells Axios.

What's next: If approved, the county's medical examiner facilities at Broadlawns could close as early as July.