Courtesy / Harris County Institute of Forensic SciencesWith roughly 20 percent of the Harris County medical examiner's office jobs sitting vacant, the Commissioners Court this week voted to give the struggling agency nearly $2 million in additional funding to help retain employees and whittle down a significant backlog of cases formed, in part, by an exodus of staffers.
Phatak declined to participate in a phone call seeking more information about the specifics of the backlog. Institute administrators planned to use $447,000 on $1,500 retention bonuses for each of its 298 staffers, according to documents about the $1.8 million allocation. Another $950,400 will go toward paying pathology contractors as part of a short-term strategy to move casework along and reduce the backlog.
Another $400,000 from the funding will help the institute pay a transport contractor to speed up the time it takes to move bodies to labs, according to documents.