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Benninghoff, Sayers Back Bill to Require Reporting COVID and Other Disease Deaths to Coroners

Pennsylvania’s system for reporting of COVID-19 deaths has led to number discrepancies and some confusion on a local level — and county coroners say it has impeded their ability to carry out their duties.

“Had the existing coroner system been utilized by the [Pennsylvania] Department of Health there would have been more consistency with the numbers and more assurance in the numbers of deaths that occurred based on the evidence,” Centre County Coroner Scott Sayers said during a news conference on Wednesday at the Penn Stater Hotel and Conference Center.

Sayers was in attendance with state House Majority Leader Kerry Benninghoff, R-Bellefonte, and others to support legislation introduced by Blair County Republican state Sen. Judy Ward that would require deaths from disease constituting a health disaster, emergency or pandemic to be reported to county coroners for investigation.

“The legislation will provide more accurate reporting of the deaths and ensure the safety and wellbeing of our communities,” Ward said. “This bill requires the Department of Health to give Pennsylvanians the transparent state government they deserve. It should not be even remotely controversial to ensure coroners can meet their responsibilities under the law to investigate deaths within their jurisdiction.”

The Department of Health reports COVID deaths by county of residency, not necessarily where the death occurred. DOH officials have said that is because in many cases a person dies at a hospital outside their home county and reporting it by residence more accurately affects the disease in the community.

Lycoming County Coroner Charles Kiessling, who serves as president of the Pennsylvania County Coroners Association, said the association also was told that because COVID deaths are natural causes, they do not need to be reported to coroners.

“They are natural deaths. There’s no question about that… but it’s a contagious disease that constitutes a public hazard and by state statute those deaths are to be reported to the coroner’s office,” Kiessling said.

Benninghoff and Kiessling said it is already in the state’s county code that any deaths by communicable disease constitute a public health risk that need to be reported to coroners.

“During a pandemic, now and in the future, is not a time to be having turf battles,” said Benninghoff, who was Centre County Coroner from 1992 to 1996. “We’re all here to serve the public and try to get the pandemic under control. Throughout this pandemic we’ve tried to learn a lot but these problems have caused a lot of confusion about the COVID death numbers, what constitutes a COVID death how this data is being reported and whether it’s accurately reflected and what’s being done with it subsequently.

“Every time that I have engaged with the department I have expressed my concerns about the lack of cooperation with the county coroners and the administration impeding their ability to do their jobs and reflect this accurately. It is vital that these individuals be called in these types of cases or even when there is doubt and let them deny whether or not that is a case that falls under their jurisdiction.”

The two-fold complication has resulted in wide discrepancies between state and county-level death counts. The Centre County coroner’s office has recorded 180 COVID-19 deaths, while the Department of Health reports 224 deaths attributed to the virus among county residents.

Ward introduced virtually identical legislation last year as coroners expressed frustrations that they were not being informed of COVID deaths and so could not investigate and certify them to provide an accurate representation of fatalities in their communities.

That legislation passed the House and Senate with bipartisan support but was vetoed by Gov. Tom Wolf in November. Wolf wrote in his veto message that adding reporting requirements would cause delays in receiving information needed to make public health and safety decisions. He added that another provision of the bill provides access to databases containing identifying information not needed for determining if an autopsy is needed and would risk “the release of highly sensitive personal information without the protections guaranteed by the Vital Statistics Law.”

Most coroners took their own initiative to work with local hospitals and nursing homes to have them report COVID deaths. But Kiessling and others said that being notified and the bill’s provision to grant coroners access to the state electronic death reporting system is important because of the public safety role they play in the community.

“The counties that don’t have public health departments, we are the contact point,” Kiessling said. “If an EMS person, law enforcement, family members, coworkers have contact with someone who may have died from COVID we end up being involved in that contact tracing and if the person hasn’t been tested we’re getting the testing done.”

In cases where there are questions, he said, it is important to determine whether or not COVID is the cause of death.

“We’re not using probable,” Kiessling said. “We don’t walk into a death scene where there’s white powder all over and say ‘Well, it’s a drug death.’ We do testing for that. Same thing with COVID. We’re going to do a COVID test… and determine if truly that was a COVID death or whether it was not. Then we can use that information to protect those first responders.”

Benninghoff and Ward said they are hopeful they can make their case to Wolf this time around, as well as to new Acting Secretary of Health Alison Beam, who took on her role earlier this year.

“It is important that people understand that coroners are duly elected individually to serve impartial and objectively in their counties,” Benninghoff said. “In counties that do not have a department of health, they serve that role in many ways. They provide that very impartial information of things that they see on scene and things that they may discover through lab tests and through autopsies. It is important to keep these elected individuals’ impartial objective abilities to protect you and I as a community by having quality, accurate information.”