Statewide system shutdown delaying death certificates

Jul 12, 2024 By MEGHAN BRADBURY 3 min read

It’s taking longer to process and receive death certificates in Florida.

The Florida Department of Health Vital Statistics system has been down since last month, leaving funeral homes and health care facilities forced to process certificates offline and by hand.

Efforts are continuing to resolve the problem, state officials said.

“We are working around the clock to restore the online Vital Statistics system,” said State Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo in a prepared statement. “The majority of department operations and services remain operational and unchanged.”

Florida Department of Health Deputy Communications Director Jae Williams wrote in an email that the agency is working diligently to resolve the temporary outage impacting the online Vital Statistics system.

“To facilitate continued operations of death certificates, the Department has worked closely with funeral homes and health care facilities to implement offline procedures during this period. These instructions have been provided to all licensed funeral directors statewide. In addition, all county health departments have been provided the necessary resources to issue death certificates offline during this time,” Williams wrote. “We also request the support from health care facilities and physicians to expedite hand-signed death certificates. This collaboration across all partners will assist families in navigating difficult times with minimal disruption.”

Timothy Hauck, managing partner and funeral director of Fuller Metz Cremation & Funeral Services said they first noticed that the statewide system was down on June 28.

“It’s statewide. They really haven’t conveyed to us what the issue is. All we know is it’s down,” he said.

With the electronic system down, Hauck said they have reverted back to a more manual system, which is how they used to do things before the digital format was provided.

Now, without the digital format, most death certificates are done via fax. The paperwork is sent to the physician, who completes the medical portion and returns it with a signature. From there the form is hand delivered to the local health department.

“We are still functioning,” Hauck said. “We are able to function and create death certificates and get copies. It’s just in a much slower manner than typically what happened before.”

Although there are a lot of factors involved on how quickly a death certificate becomes available — it is taking probably a week to two weeks longer to process, he said. Hauck said in a normal world it would take roughly 10 to 14 days for families to get copies of death certificates back.

“We weren’t able to order death certificates until this week,” Hauck said of ordering the copies.

Williams said that county health departments are still able to issue copies of birth certificates for individuals born before June 28, 2024, and those on or after the date, the department is working with hospitals to continue manual processing of birth certificates.

“For families seeking assistance, all county health departments are prepared to provide guidance and support,” Williams said.

Individuals can locate their local county health department at: FloridaHealth.gov, and email any questions or concerns regarding Vital Statistics services at VitalStats@flhealth.gov.

To reach MEGHAN BRADBURY, please email news@breezenewspapers.com