The WA Government has announced that millions will be invested in new upgrades to the State mortuary.
The $8.7 million redevelopment will enable a more efficient post-mortem process for pathologists to determine the cause of unexplained or unexpected deaths in WA and is the biggest redevelopment of the State mortuary in over 40 years.
Key upgrades include a larger and more streamlined admissions area, enhanced audio-visual equipment and a dedicated infectious autopsy theatre, will ensure the mortuary is future-proofed to continue delivering services.
WA’s Health Minister, Ms Amber-Jade Sanderson, made the announcement alongside Attorney General, Mr John Quigley, on 24 January 2023.
“This is the first major redevelopment of the State Mortuary facility since it was built in the 1970s,” Minister Sanderson said.
“The expansion will allow pathologists and staff to work in a state-of-the-art facility and continue to deliver a high-quality service.”
Pathologists in the State Mortuary perform an essential role, providing post-mortem examinations to assist in the investigation of more than 3,100 unexpected or unexplained deaths reported to the State Coroner each year.
During the examination small samples of tissue are routinely taken for further analysis, including microbiology, anatomical histology, toxicology, and pharmacology, and in some cases, organs must also be removed, though they are all returned to the body upon completion.
The actual autopsy may take between three hours to two days to complete, however the entire post-mortem process can last for weeks – waiting for results to return from other agencies.
The mortuary’s storage capability was expanded in 2013, from 80 to 150 corpses, after ‘space limitations’ were caused by an excess of unclaimed bodies, which are referred to the Public Trustee after one month for contact tracing and buried by the State Government if still unclaimed after three.
Yet by 2019, the facility was already stretched past capacity and made headlines due to a backlog of 506 cases at the WA Coroner’s Court and a delay of up to 18 months for families seeking closure – the mortuary was forced to store bodies at other locations, a situation eerily precognizant of COVID.
And while WA was spared the high death toll that other regions around the globe endured during the pandemic, there has still been an increase of nearly 600 deaths needing investigation each year since 2019.
The expanded facilities will increase capacity to perform more post-mortems, improve the coronial system and inform work carried out by the wider WA health system, the WA Police Force, and the WA Department of Justice and Office of Public Prosecutions.
Preliminary works are complete, with construction expected to be completed in July 2023.
“These works are a key to the McGowan Government’s ongoing commitment to streamlining the WA Justice system,” Mr Quigley said.
“It follows the Government’s purchase of a new CT for the Coroner’s Court three years ago, which performed more than 3,000 non-invasive scans in 2021-22.”
The addition of just one scanner increased the State mortuary’s efficiency by 30%, enabling pathologists to generate a full body image in just half an hour.