BMJ  2004;328:165 (17 January), doi:10.1136/bmj.328.7432.165-a

Letter

Death of the teaching autopsy

Hospital and coroners' postmortem examinations are different, not least in payment

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR—Like Underwood, I, too, lament the demise of the postmortem examination.¹ He points out that 90% of postmortem examinations in British hospitals are now coroners' cases. However, neither he nor O'Grady mentions that a significant financial incentive exists for many pathologists to perform a coroner's postmortem examination rather than a hospital examination.¹

As a naive senior house officer I recall pleading with a consultant pathologist to perform a hospital postmortem examination on one of my patients, mainly for teaching purposes. He was insistent I referred the case to the coroner, even though I was clear as to the cause of death and there were no suspicious circumstances.

I discovered only later that consultant pathologists at that hospital (but not my current institution) received a substantial payment for each coroner's postmortem examination that they performed. When a pathologist performs such an examination the report and findings belong to the . . . [Full text of this article]

University of Wales College of Medicine, Cardiff CF14 4XN alcolado@btinternet.com

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