Our View: Secure hiring of full-time chief medical examiner for Guam

After more than three-and-a-half years of searching for a new chief medical examiner, Guam finally has a candidate for the job lined up.

The Post-Mortem Commission voted unanimously to select Dr. Keng-Chih “Kenny” Su for the position after a recommendation by a search committee, based on the experience, education and interviews of eligible candidates.

Su was trained in Taiwan in neurology before he studied pathology and is board-certified in the United States in three different forensic categories, according to an Office of the Attorney General news release.

It’s hoped he will take the job so Guam will once again have a full-time chief medical examiner.

Guam hasn’t had a chief medical examiner since early 2019, when former chief medical examiner Dr. Aurelio Espinola retired. Espinola gave a year’s notice that he would be retiring after 23 years as chief medical examiner, yet the Post-Mortem Commission didn’t seem to make filling the critical job a priority.

The lack of a chief medical examiner caused long delays in autopsies in cases of suspicious deaths, such as homicide investigations. The government of Guam has been paying forensic pathologists to fly out from Hawaii to perform the medical examinations required in these cases. The wait time in these instances can be between two to four weeks.

There have also been long delays in non-forensic pathology reports, which has meant that families have had to wait much longer than they had to in the past to finally lay their loved ones to rest.

There has been an ever-shrinking pool of forensic pathologists in the United States, and local law requires that the chief medical examiner be a forensic pathologist — not just a coroner or a pathologist — which has limited the pool of applicants.

The Post-Mortem Commission needs to secure a full-time chief medical examiner, even if that means it needs to go to the governor or the Legislature to put together a compensation package that will get Su or another qualified applicant to take the job.