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Q&A
OCME's strategies for staff retention
4:21:18
ยท
76 sec
Council Member Mercedes Narcisse inquires about OCME's strategies for retaining staff. Dr. Jason Graham outlines several approaches the agency is taking to address staff retention.
- Dr. Graham emphasizes the importance of recent contract negotiations, particularly with DC37 and the doctor's council
- He mentions a multi-pronged approach to retain senior doctors, train new doctors, and better support existing staff
- The agency is working on realigning forensic operations to provide additional layers of support for doctors
- OCME is adding locum tenens pathologists to fill staffing gaps while working to fully reconstitute the medical examiner staff
Mercedes Narcisse
4:21:18
Okay.
4:21:20
Having said that, you doing anything to retain the staffs?
Jason Graham
4:21:25
Well, certainly with respect to the medical examiner, well, across many sectors of our operation, the contract negotiations, I think, were very critically important.
4:21:38
Involving DC thirty seven, for example, the doctor's counsel for our doctors, those were, I think, critically important in ensuring our ability to retain staff.
4:21:51
And with respect to our doctors, some of the additional steps that we've taken, as I said, a multi pronged approach to not only keep the senior doctors that we have, train new doctors, but also better support the doctors that we have on staff by realignment in many ways in our forensic operations.
4:22:13
So that they are able to have additional layers of support.
4:22:19
That includes the addition of the locum tendons pathologists who are going to be able to fill in some of the staffing gaps until we have an adequate amount of time to reconstitute fully our medical examiner staff, which I'm hoping will happen over the course of months.
Mercedes Narcisse
4:22:34
The way I'm pushing so hard is because we have a gold standard lab because we are the leading in that aspect, New York City stand outstanding job and I wanna say thank you for that.