Falsified Death Certificates

The allegations against Malinow & Silverman Mortuary (Part I, Sept. 27) are certainly serious. Funeral directors do not condone the alleged practice of falsifying death certificates. However, most funeral directors can assuredly feel sympathetic to the mortuary’s present situation. Every funeral director in this county has felt the increasing frustration in trying to get doctors to complete a death certificate that is acceptable to the Los Angeles County Health Dept.

The death certificate is a state document, yet the state registrar, David Mitchell, has allowed every county health department in this state to make, or interpret at will, its own regulations. A certificate that would be accepted in Orange County, for instance, could be rejected in Los Angeles County. Even within the boundaries of L.A. County, the cities of Long Beach and Pasadena have their own health department registrars and can reject or accept a death certificate that LACHD would or would not accept.

Bureaucratic mentality has created this mess. It’s time Mitchell got his act together and made every county play by the same rules.

An error in the article needs to be corrected. Most funeral directors do not collect the death certificate from the doctor. In most cases, the funeral director has to take the certificate to the doctor’s office for him to complete. Many times the doctor is seeing patients and requires funeral home personnel to either sit and wait for it, which can be several hours in some cases, or make a second or third trip back to the doctor’s office to get one that will be accepted by the county.

California Health and Safety Code Sections 10203 and 10204 require the attending physician to sign the death certificate within 15 hours after death, leave it at the place of death, have it available for the funeral director to pick up at his office or deliver it to the funeral director. This law is not enforced.

If the Los Angeles County coroner is involved in signing the certificate, there is normally a two- to five-day delay before the deceased can be released. This delay is frustrating to many families.

Perhaps frustration is too mild a word. Funeral directors try very hard to assure the family that their wishes will be carried out.

The Los Angeles County Funeral Directors Assn. for years has tried to work out our problems with the county health department. This seems to be an agency of county government that is its own entity and the attitude appears to be, the taxpayers be damned.

LARRY E. HAWKINS

President

L.A. County Funeral

Directors Assn.