A local news story aired the other day. It seems a woman was killed in a traffic accident. There were other people injured, but she was the only one who didn’t survive.
The EMT’s arrived at the scene and did what they do best, they did a triage, and seeing that the woman was no longer among the living, concentrated their efforts on the injured. All were transported to the hospital, where once again the emergency room doctors worked on those they could help and sent the dead woman’s body to the morgue. Now the State of Utah, as I understand it, is the only one of the fifty states that does not require the medical examiner be informed in every such death. In other states the EMT’s would have called the M.E. while in route to the hospital. You can imagine what a multi-injury accident can do to an emergency room. Everyone was busy with overwhelming demand. Since the woman had not passed away in the hospital, but at the scene of the accident, the hospital did not make out a death certificate.
The family of the victim called their mortuary and the woman’s body was picked up. A funeral was scheduled and everything seemed be be in order, except there wasn’t a death certificate. No one had declared her dead. Without being declared dead it is against the law to bury someone.
So there they were, all the woman’s family gathered together at her funeral when the news broke that she couldn’t be buried because of a technicality. What? No problem, just get someone to sign the death certificate. Simple, right? No way. The hospital said they couldn’t sign it because she didn’t die there. The M.E. said he couldn’t sign because he hadn’t seen the body. And the EMT’s apparently don’t have the authority to sign so, there we are.
What are you going to do with a body that can’t be buried–lay it out on the grass? Thank goodness the family turned to the news media. Television reporters were sent out to get to the bottom of this bizarre story, to find out why everyone seemed to be passing the buck (Rule #7). Finally, an emergency room doctor said that he did see the body and he would sign the death certificate. All’s well that ends well, right? Maybe. What about the family that was put through this shocking turn of events? Wasn’t their natural grief enough to bear without the added stress?
This would be a funny story if it wasn’t so tragic. Don’t you agree?
Written by Bill Ruesch blog author of Talking Through My Hat, A Print Broker’s Ruminations www.billprintbroker.com
2 responses so far ↓
1 Marvin // Jul 3, 2009 at 9:39 am
Another silly example of bureaucracy at it’s most absurd. Perhaps Utah should review its laws to ensure that every death is properly registered. It seems that such a loopholemight be exploited by someone wishing to pose as the deceased and defraud the system. Such was the case recently in New York where a son actually posed as his dead mother to collect Social Security.
2 admin // Jul 3, 2009 at 9:55 am
Good point Marvin. I know I’ve thought on an occassion or two how nice it would be to be “officially” dead but not really dead. Talk about being able to do the least necessary to succeed.
Leave a Comment