Beaufort County is first in the state to employ a forensic pathologist. ‘I’m very proud of it‘
Beaufort County is the first in the state to have a forensic pathologist on staff.
Dr. Joni Skipper has stepped into the role of pathologist to perform autopsies for the county. She started work this month.
Having a pathologist on staff means Beaufort County will no longer have autopsies performed at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston and can instead do them in-house at the coroner’s office in Port Royal.
As a full-time pathologist, Skipper will earn $275,00 annually and her assistant, Sheldon Phillips, will make $70,000. The expenditures were approved by the County Council in the 2023 budget.
At MUSC, autopsies can take up to eight days to perform with results taking up to 12 weeks to get to families. It’s expected that with Skipper on staff here, autopsy results will take 24 to 36 hours and, barring the need for tissue or toxicology-related specimen processing, results can get to families in two days, county officials said.
Another benefit of having an in-house pathologist is that investigators and law enforcement can interact directly with the pathologist, said Skipper.
“Now we’ve got the opportunity to have law enforcement here in the autopsy suite with us so that we can share information and they can ask me questions,” she said. “Not all cases are criminal, but the ones that are, they need answers as soon as possible so that they can get a suspect.”
Aside from getting results quicker, having Skipper in-house will also allow for families of victims to sit down one-on-one and ask her questions as well, Beaufort County Coroner David Ott said.
“She will talk to you just like she’s teaching school in a classroom for a fifth grade class, or if she wants to talk to you like a college professor, she can do that, too,” said Ott. “A lot of the time doctors will talk about these big medical terms. She’s very able to communicate.”
Despite being the first pathologist in the state to be a county employee, Skipper says she “hadn’t given it much thought” and instead is much more excited about the good she can do for Beaufort County.
“I’m more concerned with the services that we’re going to be offering,” said Skipper. “It’s the discovery, it’s looking for the answers and being able to get those answers to families.”
Skipper said she originally wanted to be a surgeon, but after losing a loved one and not having answers, she decided to go into pathology, to be able to provide those answers to the families of the deceased.
“I’m very proud of it.” Is that an accomplishment that I did? No,” said Ott. “There’s no way in the world at which any one person can take credit for doing what we have now.”
Ott said the staff at the coroner’s office is a team, and even gave credit to his predecessor, Ed Allen, for the work he did to establish the autopsy suite that is now open.
“He was very instrumental in getting the setup, the table, all that built when they remodeled all this,” said Ott. “He tried for many, many years to locate a pathologist.”
Nationwide shortage of pathologists
There’s a “severe” shortage nationwide of board-certified forensic pathologists in the country, according to Skipper and Ott. The coroner for Charleston County was recently approved to hire a staff pathologist, like here in Beaufort County, but can’t find one, Ott said.
“We were very fortunate to find [Skipper] and when we did, she was ready for a move and we were ready to grab her,” said Ott. “When she offered to come here, we jumped on it”
The coroner expects surrounding counties to pay to use the autopsy services in Beaufort County instead of MUSC. The coroner anticipates around 50 autopsies from surrounding counties a year.
Priority for these autopsies will be determined on a case-by-case basis and by importance, with homicides or other more-urgent cases taking priority over natural deaths.
Before coming to work in Beaufort County, Skipper worked for the Georgia Bureau of Investigations as a forensic pathologist and associate medical examiner for five years.
She has an undergrad and medical degree from the University of South Carolina in Columbia and completed a four-year residency in anatomic pathology and clinical pathology at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina.
