State-of-the-art morgue opens at Washington Hospital
Tim Warco, Washington County coroner, answers questions during a tour of the new morgue at Washington Hospital Thursday.
Celeste Van Kirk/ Observer-Reporter
Tim Warco, Washington County coroner, answers questions during a tour of the new morgue at Washington Hospital in 2015.
Coroner Tim Warco answers questions from Gary Weinstein, second from right, chief executive officer of Washington Health System, Commissioner Larry Maggi and David Truxell, director of the laboratory at Washington Hospital, during a tour of the new morgue.
Commissioner Harlan Shober, left, shakes hands with David Truxell, director of the laboratory at Washington Hospital, while Gary Weinstein, chief executive officer of Washington Health System, talks with commissioners Larry Maggi and Diana Irey Vaughan before they take a tour of the new facility at Washington Hospital.
Tim Warco was just 15 years old when he started visiting the morgue at Washington Hospital while working part time for a Washington funeral director. Decades later, as Washington County coroner, he found himself overseeing countless autopsies.
On Thursday, he could not contain his excitement and pride in showing off a state-of-the-art forensic facility that is taking the place of the cramped, one-room morgue that had been used by himself and his predecessors in determining the cause and manner of people who died under suspicious circumstances.
“The new place is conducive to evidence collection,” Warco said Thursday. “What we do in that room extends to the courtroom. If we don’t do it right the first time, then we can’t go back. We’ve come a long way.”
The forensic facility was designed and built through a joint effort between Washington Health System and Washington County. Greg Caldwell, director of facilities for Washington Health System, served as the project manager and visited three other morgues to determine what should be included in converting an area of the hospital that had once been a print shop into the forensic facility.
The morgue features a state-of-the art autopsy station and a large, walk-in freezer unit. It will be used by both the coroner’s office and the hospital. Warco pointed out a scale in the floor of the new autopsy room.
“The medical examiner used to have to guess the person’s weight,” Warco said. “And this refrigeration unit is even bigger than the one at UPMC-Presbyterian hospital.”
The autopsy table can be manipulated up and down,” he added. “We even have a ladder so we can take photos from above.”
Larry Maggi, chairman of the county commissioners, also was impressed with the facility, having been part of numerous autopsies during his career as a criminal investigator with the Pennsylvania state police.
“There have been a lot of advances,” Maggi said. “DNA analysis now is unbelievable.”
“It was a team effort,” said Gary Weinstein, health system president and chief executive officer of the project. “We are a community-based hospital and do this kind of partnership along with other programs.”
Weinstein said the new facility also will be safer for those working on an autopsy.
“It was cramped quarters for people to work in the other,” he added.
Warco said that having the facility at the hospital is also a savings to the taxpayer because the county can avail itself of the different testing that may be needed, such as histology and radiography.
“There are lot of in-house things we can take advantage of, including security,” Warco said.
The county commissioners used funding from the gas impact fee and fines and costs paid by criminal defendants to help fund the county’s estimated $250,000 share of the project. Warco talked with Commissioner Diane Irey Vaughan about funding the project and Commissioner Harlan Shober about the construction. Shober said if the county were to build its own morgue, the cost estimate was $6 million.
Warco said he will also be able to include medical students and Penn Commercial students as part of a teaching program to show what occurs during an autopsy. The coroner said he has already be part of about a dozen autopsies in the new morgue.