Grant County looking for new morgue site

MOSES LAKE — Grant County will need a new morgue, and county officials are looking for land to build one.

Grant County Coroner Craig Morrison said the need for a new facility arose because the existing one is in Samaritan Hospital. A new Samaritan Hospital is under construction, but it won’t include a new morgue. Grant County Central Services Director Tom Gaines said that’s because there’s only so much space available at the hospital.

Originally county officials were planning a morgue of about 5,000 to 5,200 square feet, Gaines said, but that was before the morgue was awarded reaccreditation, and county officials looked at recommendations from the accompanying report. 

“That’s when we first started to discover that it might not be big enough,” Gaines said.

Morrison said part of the accreditation process was an analysis of the existing space, and the existing caseload. Currently the coroner works out of a small office at the Grant County Health District in addition to the morgue at the hospital, where the autopsies, blood tests and toxicology screens are done, among other procedures. Between the two the coroner has about 3,200 square feet.

“Our caseload does exceed what our square footage is currently at,” Morrison said. 

The accreditation team suggested that given the coroner’s caseload, it needed both more space and more personnel.

Morrison said the coroner’s office investigated 521 cases in 2023. The accreditation team said the GCCO should have one investigator for every 100 cases. Four people, including Morrison, make up the existing staff. 

It’s the coroner’s job to investigate all deaths that occur outside a medical facility, Morrison said. “All the deaths that take place outside a physician’s care,” he said.

In addition to cases in Grant County, the morgue is used by some neighboring counties, including Adams, Kittitas and Lincoln counties. Grant County does charge other counties for the facility’s use.

Given the accreditation team recommendations, county officials are considering a facility of about 7,500 square feet with the option to expand. Morrison said the caseload is approaching 600 investigations for 2024, compared to about 300 when he first joined the coroner’s office in 2010.

Gaines said county officials did talk to the architects and construction managers at Samaritan, and the space they could spare, the original estimate of about 5,000 square feet, wasn’t enough.

“We just couldn’t get the space on the hospital side,” Gaines said. 

County officials have found a piece of property next to the new Samaritan site owned by the Moses Lake School District. Morrisoin said it’s most convenient if the morgue is located where most of the cases are, and in Grant County that’s Moses Lake.

“We belong to the medical community in our county,” Morrision said. “I believe the medical community is in Moses Lake.”

County officials have talked to the MLSD, but so far no agreement has been reached, Gaines said. 

Cost of a new morgue has not been determined. Gaines said there’s a preliminary design, but it’s for a 5,000-square-foot building. 

“We might have to start from scratch,” Gaines said. 

The new Samaritan Hospital is projected to be open for patients by spring 2026, and a new morgue has to be ready to open by then, Gaines said. 

“I’ve got this ticking clock,” he said. 

Cheryl Schweizer can be reached via email at cschweizer@columbiabasinherald.com.