Death Certificate

[bruncher]

Does anyone know if the medical authorities are under a legal obligation to provide a death certificate within a particular time following death? We have organised a funeral for my mother which may now have to be cancelled because the certificate has yet to be provided. Today is the seventh day after she died.

[Slarti]

Does anyone know if the medical authorities are under a legal obligation to provide a death certificate within a particular time following death? We have organised a funeral for my mother which may now have to be cancelled because the certificate has yet to be provided. Today is the seventh day after she died.

It may well depend on circumstances. In all of the cases I've been involved with, 6 so far, things have mostly happened quite quickly, even though 4 of them required post mortems. Having said that, if it was a sudden death, even if an elderly person, there may be a backlog in the PMs being done, due to staff shortages.

Chapter and verse here https://www.gov.uk/register-a-death/y/e ... ospital/no It should be registered within 5 days.
Are you saying that you haven't had the medical certificate showing cause of death from the attending doctor? Because it is then up to you to use that to get the death certificate(s) from the Register Office when you register the death.

Slarti

[Lootman]

They are usually issued very promptly unless there is a question over the cause of death, in which case a post mortem examination by a pathologist may be needed.

I was in charge of issuing them at a hospital I worked at long ago, and my aim was to produce them within 24 hours. There was sometimes a delay if the body was to be cremated as that required the signatures of two doctors rather than the usual one.

[Dod101]

I am very sorry to hear of your loss. I would think the answer is probably not, because until they can establish the cause of death they cannot provide a certificate. You cannot register the death until you have a certificate of death from a doctor and I am surprised that an undertaker would agree to go ahead with the funeral arrangements without that in hand or at least promised. By the 'medical authorities' I assume you mean a hospital doctor. Have you asked what is holding it up? My most recent experience was when my wife died at home and I had a certificate within hours of the death because she had cancer diagnosed long before and so the cause of death was not difficult to establish.

I would press 'the authorities' soonest.

Dod

[Lootman]

I am surprised that an undertaker would agree to go ahead with the funeral arrangements without that in hand or at least promised.

Not only that but the hospital will not release the body without the relevant documentation, and the funeral directors can't have that yet since it requires a valid death certificate.

[bruncher]

Thanks for all the replies.

My mother had been in a nursing home for over two years. Without going into too much detail, she did have a terminal illness but was very stable as the condition was managed with regular blood transfusions. She outlived all prognoses. Three weeks ago she got a chest infection/pneumonia, went to hospital for three days, then back to the home (where she had made it known she wished to die) and her condition declined rapidly.

Her own GP attended when the home found she had died, but the GP has still, after a week, not produced the certificate. We have phoned every day.

It's been promised for today (time unspecified), which should just give us time to go to the registrar and funeral director.

I suppose we should not have arranged anything without the certificate, but the issue never occurred to me as a possibility.

The body went from the nursing home to the designated funeral director.

[pochisoldi]

Ask the "attending doctor" (who may or may not be the GP) whether the case has been referred to the coroner.
If the answer is Yes - then next step - contact the coroner.
If the answer is No - then "what's the next step"
If the answer is mnnnhrrr/ahem/mumble then tell the doctor "to pull their finger out, or you will speak to the coroner"

The local coroner's office will be helpful, but usually be overrun with work, however allowing funerals to proceed is a priority.
Don't be afraid to apply pressure - I suggest tasking a close relative with project management skills to handle them.
I would suggest contacting the local coroner, to see if there is any requirement for an inquest (and hence a post mortem)
Note that the "Coroner's Court" is now a local function - first point of contact your local council, rather than the local court office.

From experience, where there's going to be an inquest and the body isn't going to be cremated the routine was:
Post mortem
Inquest opened, body released for burial and adjourned (Funeral director can then commit to a funeral date)
Funeral
At some later date, inquest hearing takes place.

There is a chance where death was expected and the post mortem is clear/consistent, then the inquest may be opened, and closed with verdict, but my advice remains the same.

Good luck

[DrBunsenHoneydew]

Three weeks ago she got a chest infection/pneumonia, went to hospital for three days, then back to the home (where she had made it known she wished to die) and her condition declined rapidly.

Her own GP attended when the home found she had died, but the GP has still, after a week, not produced the certificate. We have phoned every day.

If the GP did not see her in the two weeks before she died that can impair the issuing of certificates.

[production100]

If the GP did not see her in the two weeks before she died that can impair the issuing of certificates.

We had a case where the GP's receptionist said the GP would need to speak to the patient before they could issue the death certificate. Our reply was to say that we did not know that they could do that...

She caught on in the end, but it had to be explained a couple of times. Obviously not the brightest of sparks...

Chris

[pochisoldi]

Three weeks ago she got a chest infection/pneumonia, went to hospital for three days, then back to the home (where she had made it known she wished to die) and her condition declined rapidly.

Her own GP attended when the home found she had died, but the GP has still, after a week, not produced the certificate. We have phoned every day.

If the GP did not see her in the two weeks before she died that can impair the issuing of certificates.

Okey dokey, I can hear the theme tune for the Magic Roundabout, and see people going round in circles.

It looks like "Completing a medical certificate of cause of death (MCCD) " at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/guidance-notes-for-completing-a-medical-certificate-of-cause-of-death is the starting point.

The document you are chasing is called a "Medical Certificate of Cause of Death" aka "MCCD".

The highlights:

"The doctor who attended the deceased during their last illness has a legal responsibility to complete a MCCD and arrange for the delivery of it to the relevant registrar as soon as possible to enable the registration to take place. Deaths are required by law to be registered within 5 days of their occurrence unless there is to be a coroner’s post mortem or an inquest."

...

"When a patient dies it is the statutory duty of the doctor who has attended in the last illness to issue the MCCD. There is no clear legal definition of “attended”, but it is generally accepted to mean a doctor who has cared for the patient during the illness that led to death and so is familiar with the patient’s medical history, investigations and treatment. The certifying doctor should also have access to relevant medical records and the results of investigations. There is no provision under current legislation to delegate this statutory duty to any non-medical staff.
In hospital, there may be several doctors in a team caring for the patient. It is ultimately the responsibility of the consultant in charge of the patient's care to ensure that the death is properly certified. Any subsequent enquiries, such as for the results of post-mortem or ante-mortem investigations, will be addressed to the consultant."

My suggestion.

Ask the GP one last time. If they do not respond within 24hrs, then (1) as a separate task, make a formal complaint. and (2) chase the consultant at the hospital instead.

Identify the consultant who had responsibility for your mother's care before she was allowed to go home, and find out their contact info.
Note that "contact info" doesn't necessarily mean the consultant's phone number, just the information needed to ask the consultant to provide the MCCD.

An easy option might be for you or someone to visit the ward your Mother was on, and speak to a nurse or administrator.

If you are physically there at the hospital when you find this info out, provide them with as much of the following information as possible.
a) Name, Home address, NHS number (not NI number!), Patient Number, Date of admission, date of discharge/release back home.
b) Your name address and contact number. (or the details of whoever's handling this matter for you).

To be honest, I think this is probably more likely to be cockup rather than conspiracy.

The consultant probably hasn't sent the usual letter to the GP to update their records, so the GP has no visibility of what happened. (Letters from hospitals to GPs take weeks to arrive)
The consultant probably isn't aware of your Mother's passing, so they aren't aware of any need to provide an MCCD or that the GP letter needs to be expedited.
The GP probably thinks that the consultant is on to it.

(Note that I'm using the term "consultant" here on the back of the wording of the document I linked to, and also on the basis that the consultant is effectively a "manager of doctors", who is responsible for patients care, either directly or by delegating to his subordinate registrar(s) and junior doctors.)

I would strongly suggest asking yourself "Do I really want to do this?". You may want to chase it yourself (e.g. to satisfy your sense of duty to your Mum), but you've almost certainly got a lot on your plate at the moment, and you might want to delegate.

PochiSoldi