OMI wants $ to take bodies back home

ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) - Legislators appear ready to re-fund a program that covered the cost of transporting bodies back to hometowns for burial after they’ve been autopsied.

For the last two years, budget cuts have forced the New Mexico Office of the Medical Investigator to make funeral homes come and pick up those bodies in Albuquerque. That extra cost was passed on to families.

"A deceased loved one in a rural area is just as important as a deceased loved one in an urban area, so hopefully we'll be able to take care of this problem," said state Sen. John Arthur Smith, D-Deming.

OMI investigates about 6,000 cases each year, a third of all deaths in the state. Of those, about 2,100 bodies come through Albuquerque for a full autopsy to determine the cause of death of someone who died unexpectedly from, for example, a fall, a heart attack or a homicide.

Families have no say when the body is taken, sometimes hundreds of miles away. to Albuquerque, for the autopsy. OMI pays for that transportation. But two years ago, as the state budget shrunk, the agency had to change its procedures and began asking funeral homes to pick up bodies in Albuquerque.

"It really was perceived as cruel in many cases," said Tim Rivera, owner of Rivera Funeral Homes in Santa Fe, Espanola and Taos.

Not only cruel, he said, but also nearly unprecedented.

"It was such a shock to us and it's pretty much unheard of in the rest of the United States," Rivera said. "We bore the brunt of the expenses, but ultimately, this is the cost at some point that's passed along to families."

OMI has asked the legislature for $260,000 to cover the transport of bodies back to local communities.

"We're a big rural state, so the population is spread out throughout the state," said Dr. Ross Zumwalt, chief medical investigator. "It's very costly to transport someone several hundred miles."

It costs $2 per mile for the agency to transport bodies, he said. That means a one-way transport to Las Cruces, for example, would be about $500, Zumwalt said.

Smith said he is confident that OMI’s request for money to cover the return transportation will be funded this session.