Click the play button on the video window to the see the storyPHOENIX -- It's a grim job, but an important one.
"The autopsy is a very good learning tool," said Dr. Michael Doberson, Arapahoe County coroner in the Denver metro area. "The results are going to have implications for those of us that are still alive."
Not only can autopsies provide a family with closure, knowing exactly what caused a loved one's death, autopsies are also important for the future.
"For the development of health interventions, for the setting of health priorities, (and) it's used in research," said Robert Anderson, chief of mortality data for the National Center for Health Statistics.
But a study of millions of mortality records nationwide by the Scripps Howard News Service shows the listed cause of death could be wrong at least a third of the time.
"Heart disease is used in a lot of instances as a default," Doberson said.
According to the research, most of the dead never get a final examination.
Additionally, reporting methods by medical examiners and coroners vary widely state-to-state and even county-to-county within the same state.
"If we get this information wrong, then we're likely to misallocate resources, we're likely to develop health interventions that aren't really evidence based," Anderson said.
In Arizona, the most notable disparity is in the accidental death rate, as low as five percent in Mohave County, but upwards of 12 percent in Navajo County and 17 percent in Apache County.
"I think any step that we take toward standardization for death investigation is going to be a positive step forward," Doberson said.
