Floyd County approves medical examiner, adds medical examiner investigator positions

By Bob Steenson, bsteenson@charlescitypress.com

A new Floyd County medical examiner was appointed Monday by the Board of Supervisors. The board also created the new positions of medical examiner investigators, and several MEIs could be hired yet this month to work as needed on county death cases.

The supervisors took action at their regular meeting Monday morning to solve the problem of potentially no county medical examiner available starting the first of the year.

The board approved job descriptions for the county medical examiner and for the MEIs, then appointed Dr. David Schrodt as medical examiner for a two-year period ending Dec. 31, 2025, and gave Schrodt the authority to hire several MEIs.

After the meeting the county posted job openings for the MEIs, with the application deadline Wednesday, Dec. 13, by submitting an application and resume to the county auditor’s office by 4:30 p.m. that day. Applications are available online at the Floyd County website, www.floydcoia.org, under the “How do I …” tab, then Apply/employment, or by contacting the county auditor’s office.

Four physicians with Floyd County Medical Center – Drs. Paul Royer, David Schweizer, Janet Tull and Schrodt – have shared the medical examiner duties for several years, with Dr. Royer officially the medical examiner and the others as alternates.

The four sent the supervisors a letter in July saying they were no longer interested in performing the medical examiner duties. They later agreed to continue until the end of this year.

In Iowa, any death that is violent, suspicious, sudden or unexpected must be investigated by a county-appointed medical examiner, or by an MEI overseen by a medical examiner, according to Iowa Code. This includes any death that is not attended by a physician.

The county medical examiner or MEI is called to the scene of a death to examine the deceased and investigate the circumstances surrounding a death, including interviewing witnesses and family members, photographing the scene, and determining if an autopsy is required.

According to Mark Bethel, a community health consultant with the Office of State Medical Examiner in Ankeny, who offered to help Floyd County address its medical examiner issue, there has been an average of about 162 deaths annually in the county in recent years, with an average of about 42 of those that require a medical examiner’s involvement.

Bethel talked with the supervisors three weeks ago about how a team of medical examiner investigators could take much of the field work investigation off the hands of a medical examiner.

The county medical examiner in Iowa must be a licensed physician.

Dr. Schrodt agreed to be the county medical examiner if the county would approve creating MEIs, who would report to him.

According to the job description approved by the county supervisors Monday, an MEI must have:

• Training as prescribed and approved by the state medical examiner.

• A minimum of two years experience as a licensed or certified nurse or medical care provider or peace officer, which can include experience as an EMT or paramedic.

• Certification at the registry-level as a death investigator by the American Board of Medicolegal Death Investigators within five years of appointment.

• A valid driver’s license.

The medical examiner and the MEIs will be paid on a “per-body” basis, but the supervisors did not set those rates Monday. The supervisors also did not set the number of MEIs that Schrodt will be able to hire, but talked about four to six people. Only one MEI would be involved at a time per death investigation.

Several people are already planning to take the one-day state MEI training provided by Bethel.

County Auditor Gloria Carr said that Dawn Staudt, the station supervisor for AMR ambulance, was taking three people and herself to Ankeny next week for the one-day training session with Bethel.

Also at the meeting Monday, the supervisors agreed to increase the charge to cities in the county to provide law enforcement protection through the Floyd County Sheriff’s Office. The charge for Rockford, Floyd, Marble Rock, Colwell and Rudd will increase from $4 per capita for the population of the those communities according to the U.S. Census, to $7 per capita.

The charge for deputies to respond to calls in Nora Springs, which has its own full-time police officer, will increase from $25 an hour to $50 an hour.

The issue was raised several weeks ago by the Sheriff’s Office, in a letter by Lt. Travis Bartz that said the current fees did not cover the county’s cost to provide service, and were far below the rates charged for similar services in other counties.

The supervisors asked the city mayors and Sheriff Jeff Crooks to meet to discuss the rates and come up with a proposal.

“It’s still a good deal,” Supervisor Dennis Keifer said of the new rates.

“It’s a very good deal,” Crooks agreed.