Specifications include, but are not limited to: The Office of Chief Medical Examiner (Department) is seeking telephone answering coverage as defined in this Request for Proposal (RFP) document. This document provides instructions for submitting proposals, the procedure and criteria by which the awarded Bidder will be selected, and the contractual terms which will govern the relationship between the State of Maine (State) and the awarded Bidder. The Office of Chief Medical Examiner (OCME) is a relatively small division (12 full-time people) administratively in the Department of the Attorney General and has a varied and complex mission concerned with investigating many aspects of death and dying. All violent, criminal, and suspicious deaths, and deaths of apparent undetermined causes or manners, fall under the jurisdiction of the OCME. Other types of deaths, such as infants or people in custody, or any deaths whose causes represent a potential risk to the public at large, are also investigated by the OCME. When the OCME accepts jurisdiction of a death, it is the OCME that requests or performs all the investigations and procedures necessary to determine the cause and manner of death. The personnel covering telephones after hours work as an extension of the state OCME staff. Personnel process the details surrounding the deaths of individuals by collecting histories, discussing case determinations with on-call Investigators, scheduling field Medical Examiners, and requesting medical records and hospital admission samples, often under less-than-ideal circumstances. All employees of the OCME must be able to function under conditions that are often psychologically extreme. The post-mortem states of the bodies may often be offensive to one’s physical or emotional senses.
