Dr. James Gill walked through the morgue in Farmington, Connecticut, recently, past the dock where the bodies come in, past the tissue donations area, and stopped outside the autopsy room.
鈥淲e kind of have a typical board listing all of the decedents for the day,鈥� Gill said, pointing to the list of names on a dry erase board. 鈥淥verdose, overdose, overdose, overdose overdose. That鈥檚 just for today.鈥�
Gill is the for the state of Connecticut, and of the nine bodies in his custody that day, four were the remains of the people who likely died from an accidental drug overdose. A fifth was a probable suicide involving drugs. It was a sad, but typical day, he explained, with a practical consequence for the state鈥檚 morgue: Gill is running out of room to store bodies.
鈥淲e鈥檝e had to buy some extra racks and things so we can store more,鈥� he told me. 鈥淏ut we really probably need more cooler space. We鈥檙e kind of outgrowing the storage space here.鈥�
In the past two years, Gill鈥檚 office has seen a more than a 50 percent increase in autopsies. That鈥檚 mostly because of the spike in accidental drug overdoses, he said. Heroin is the big player. Fentanyl deaths have surged, too.
I sat with Gill in the so-called family room just off the lobby of the examiner鈥檚 office. In explaining why good data on exactly which drugs killed exactly which people is important, Gill recalled a conversation he once had with a mother whose daughter had died of a drug overdose the previous year. The mother called Gill to learn more.
鈥淐an you tell me, did she suffer?鈥� the woman wanted to know. 鈥淲as she in pain?鈥�
鈥淎nd I explained to her,鈥� Gill said, 鈥渢hat, with an opioid death, the person just gradually goes to sleep and it鈥檚 very painless.
Dr. James Gill, Connecticut鈥檚 chief medical examiner, says the opioid crisis has made accidental drug overdose a much more common cause of death in his state. His office is even running out of room to store bodies, he said. (Jeff Cohen/WNPR)
鈥淎nd she started crying,鈥� Gill told me, fighting tears of his own. 鈥淎nd it gave her some comfort.鈥�
There鈥檚 another reason to get solid data 鈥� so you can craft a public health response to the epidemic. Specificity about a death today could help save a life tomorrow, he said. A death certificate needs to say more than something vague like 鈥渙pioid intoxication鈥� to help both law enforcement and public health officials curb the distribution 鈥� and hopefully abuse 鈥斅爋f opioids.
鈥淲ell, what are those opioids? Are they heroin or are they Oxycontin?鈥� 鈥� he asked rhetorically. The precise answer can make a difference in figuring out what actions to take.
But not all death certificates have as much information as they could. When Gill took the job just a few years ago, only 63 percent of Connecticut鈥檚 drug deaths had . Today 99 percent do.
鈥淚 found that the doctors here, a lot of them were certifying the deaths as acute or multi-drug intoxication,鈥� Gill told me. 鈥淎nd I said, 鈥楴o, we need to spell out what the drugs are that are causing the death.鈥� So, it would be 鈥榓cute intoxication due to the combined effects of heroin, diazepam and alcohol鈥� 鈥� and that鈥檚 how we certify the deaths now. We鈥檙e very specific about what we鈥檙e finding in the toxicology.鈥�
In 2014 , the most recent year that data are available, only Rhode Island did better than Connecticut in getting and passing along these sorts of comprehensive details. Conversely, only about half of deaths in some other states 鈥� including Pennsylvania, Indiana, Mississippi and Louisiana 鈥� have specific information on the death certificates.
There are a lot of contributing factors that could explain the variation from state to state, Gill said.
First, not all people who certify deaths have the same training.
Second, when lots of drugs are involved, some people may not be comfortable singling out one or two as the cause of death. Custom could play a role, too 鈥� the 鈥淲e鈥檝e always done it this way鈥� factor. So might size. Connecticut is small and centralized in the way it handles these cases.
鈥淎ll of the deaths are examined here by the same group of medical examiners, the same investigators,鈥� Gill said. 鈥淪o we can kind of establish that common technique and certification ability. Whereas, in a lot of jurisdictions 鈥� New York, for example 鈥� it varies by county.鈥�
, an injury epidemiologist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, focuses on monitoring trends in mortality, using death certificate data, and she agrees that lots of variables contribute to Connecticut鈥檚 success in gathering better data. But one of them is pretty basic: clear communication with the people who determine and report the cause of death.
鈥淭he thing that鈥檚 different between 2012 and the current year,鈥� Warner told me, 鈥渋s that Dr. Gill 鈥� who knows that we want those specific drugs written down on the death certificate 鈥� is now writing them down. So some of it鈥檚 about reaching out to the certifiers to make sure that they know we want the specific drugs involved.鈥�
The CDC is actively working on that, Warner said.
But, in Gill鈥檚 experience, not everyone wants all that information documented.
鈥淚 remember one call from a family member who was upset that we put heroin on the death certificate,鈥� he said. 鈥淭heir son had died of heroin, and they didn鈥檛 want it on the death certificate because they were afraid that the public was going to hear about it and know that that person died of heroin. And I said, 鈥業鈥檓 sorry, but this is a public health issue.鈥� 鈥�
And, judging , it may be a big public health issue for a long time to come.
This story is part of a partnership that includes , and Kaiser Health News.