Funeral directors believe a Government directive ordering the hand-delivery of death documentation will do little to fix weeks-long delays plaguing the Coroner’s Office.
And now, they want urgent dialogue with the Attorney General’s Office, under which the Coroner’s Office operates, to settle several systemic problems that continue to affect the industry.
The call for an urgent meeting came yesterday, after a press release through the Barbados Government Information Service on Thursday informed that the Coroner’s Office’s computer system was down. It advised funeral directors to hand-deliver medical certificates of death, warrants to bury and identification cards for the deceased while the system outage is being addressed, and thanked directors for their “cooperation and understanding”.
However, Ian Griffith, president of the Barbados Association of Funeral Directors, told the Saturday Sun the technical glitch was only the latest symptom of a much deeper breakdown in the chain that moves a body from death to burial.
“We appreciate the effort made by the court to account for the necessary documentation, but the question is, is it going to alleviate the issues that we’ve been having for a number of weeks?” Griffith asked. “No; that is delaying the autopsies being done, and then the releases or the warrants for burial or cremation.”
Waiting for weeks
One of the affected, a crying wife, said she has been waiting weeks to bury her husband and the delay has been adding to her grief.
“I’m at my wit’s end. You feel the grief, you feel the frustration that nothing has happened. My son just started a job and may have to miss his father’s funeral because after a while, they won’t give you the leave. This is so frustrating. Others want to come [from overseas] and they can’t make arrangements,” she lamented.
The woman said while the funeral home reaches out, she has no understanding of what the system entails and where the blockage is.
“Everybody is calling wanting to know what happened. I feel as though I do something wrong requesting a post-mortem. I feel as though I am the guilty persons,” she said, sobbing.
Griffith explained that a request from the coroner to a mortuary to carry out a post-mortem depends on the same computer system that has now failed.
“If the system is down, and we are being told that the system is down, the request for a post-mortem by the coroner does not go down to the mortuary for the attendant to schedule that particular postmortem,” he said. “I don’t know what they have put into place to help that situation. That was not laid out in the press release.”
He added that police reports on sudden deaths, typically sent to the Coroner’s Office by email, often fail to arrive, leaving files incomplete and warrants unsigned. “Those reports don’t get to the Coroner’s Office, and the coroner subsequently cannot give a warrant, and they don’t review those reports.”
The backlog does not end with burial. Griffith said the Coroner’s Office must also forward its findings, including the pathologist’s cause-of-death report, to the relevant registry or district court before a death certificate can be issued, a step frequently held up.
“So then you have a delay. You have insurances requiring a certificate, and it’s to fulfil such things as bills. So those are the areas that this whole problem has a ripple effect on.”
The veteran funeral director said the association has repeatedly sought a meeting with the Coroner’s Court and has written to both the Ministry of Health and the Office of the Attorney General, under whose purview the court falls, but has yet to secure a sit-down.
“We’ve been asking for meetings since last month. Up to this day, we have not had that meeting. We have since sent off another meeting request with the Attorney General’s Office.”
Griffith said the funeral operators are requesting an urgent meeting to forge a path forward that would be equitable to all involved in the business.
“This is a problem that existed a while back. Yes, there were a lot of improvements, but at the same time, we are now here again,” he said, noting families were being forced to reschedule funerals and viewings, or in some cases wait as bodies remain unprepped with delays stretch two to three weeks.
Cost of delays
He also pointed to a less-discussed cost of the delays: the mounting price tag of extended body storage at holding facilities, since sudden-death cases are not kept at hospitals.
“This is a cost to the taxpayers. The longer these bodies are stored, then the more money has to be spent in storage fees. We don’t speak about that problem, but this is how this problem has had this ripple effect.”
For Griffith, the delays cut to the heart of what funeral service is meant to be.
“Our business is not dealing just with human remains or dead bodies, as people would call them. Our business is dealing with those families, those survivors, of those loved ones,” he said, adding that every agency in the chain “from the police right down to the clerks” must recognise that their work touches the living as much as the dead.
The Coroner’s Office has not indicated when its computer system will be restored. Funeral directors have been asked to call 535-9923 to expedite matters in the meantime. (BA)