OSAC Standards

In 2014 the federal government began an initiative to improve forensic sciences by forming OSAC, the Organization of Scientific Area Committees. The committees and subcommittees in OSAC, such as the Medicolegal Death Investigation subcommittee, write standards and other documents using a consensus process. Many NAME members participate in the standards development process at multiple levels, and NAME has agreed to support standards development.
NAME has identified 27 OSAC registry standards/documents pertinent to Medical Examiner/Coroner practice. The Executive Committee introduced NAME membership to these documents over the course of one year, by providing brief summaries and key points in each document also linking to the full document and supporting materials. (All documents in the OSAC registry are available to the public on the OSAC registry website. All 27 summaries are available on the NAME website.)

Definition of Standard: Specific benchmarks, requirements, or criteria set by regulatory or professional organizations. Normative practice. The word “shall” in a standard denotes a requirement. “Should” is a recommendation but not a requirement.

Basic OSAC and Standards Development Process:

• OSAC: ANSI/ASB Standard 125, Organizational and Foundational Standard for Medicolegal Death Investigation, 2021. 1st. Ed.
• OSAC: Standard Guide for Postmortem Examination Photography
• OSAC: Standard Guide for Photographing Scars, Marks, and Tattoos
• OSAC: Medicolegal Death Investigation Response to Death Locations and Incident Scenes:  Best Practice Recommendations
• OSAC: Best Practice Recommendations for Communicating with next of Kin During Medicolegal Death Investigations
• OSAC: Standard for Disaster Victim Identification
• OSAC: Mass Fatality Scene Processing:  Best Practice Recommendations for the Medicolegal Authority
• OSAC: Mass Fatality Incident Data Management:  Best Practice Recommendation for the Medicolegal Authority
• OSAC: Medicolegal Death Investigation: Terms and Definitions
• OSAC: Standard for Interactions Between Medical Examiner, Coroner and all other Medicolegal Death Investigation Agencies and Organ and Tissue Procurement Organizations and Eye Banks
• OSAC: Standard Guide for Postmortem Facial Image Capture
  
• OSAC: Standard for Mass Fatality Incident Management
  
• OSAC: Best Practice Recommendation for the Examination of Human Remains by Forensic Pathologists in the Disaster Identification Context 
  
• OSAC: Forensic Odontology in Disaster Victim Identification:  Best Practice Recommendations for the Medicolegal Authority, 2021, 1st ed
  
• OSAC: Standard for Scene Investigation and Reconstruction—Foundational Principles
  
• OSAC: Family Engagement Following a Mass Fatality Incident:  Victim Information Centers
• OSAC: Postmortem Impression Submission Strategy for Comprehensive Searches of Essential Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) Databases
• OSAC: Standard for the Analytical Scope and Sensitivity of Forensic Toxicological Testing of Blood in Medicolegal Death Investigations
  
• OSAC: Forensic Anthropology in Disaster Victim Identification; Best Practice Recommendations for the Medicolegal Authority
  
• OSAC: Postmortem Impression Recovery, Guidance and Best Practices for Disaster Victim Identification
  
• OSAC: Best Practice Recommendation for Initial Response at Scenes by Law Enforcement Officers
  
• OSAC: Standard for Scene Response: Initial Response by Scene Investigators
  
• OSAC: Standard for On-Site Collection and Preservation of Physical Evidence
  
• OSAC: Standard for Scene Documentation Procedures
  
• OSAC: Standard for the Collection and Preservation of Entomological Evidence from a Terrestrial Environment
  
• OSAC: Media Communications Following a Mass Fatality Incident:  Best Practice Recommendations for the Medicolegal Authority
  
• OSAC: Victim Accounting:  Best Practice Recommendations for Medicolegal Authorities in Mass Fatality Management