STATE’S NEW SYSTEM FOR STREAMLINING DEATH CERTIFICATES DEVELOPED BY UC DAVIS HEALTH SYSTEM

(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) — The state Department of Health Services this month launched a trial of one of the first fully electronic death registration systems in the nation, a system developed by UC Davis Health System.

The California Electronic Death Registration System will make the creation, processing and storage of death certificates in California an electronic process, eliminating paper death certificates. The new system also will dramatically reduce the amount of time it takes to receive a copy of a completed, amended death certificate.

The Department of Health Services signed a contract with the health system to develop the software for the EDRS for $1.8 million in November 2003. Last month, the department signed an additional contract with the health system for $4.1 million to maintain and enhance the EDRS for five years. The department is conducting a six-month trial of the system in Yolo and Riverside Counties. Other counties may voluntarily follow in July.

An open house to celebrate the completion of the California EDRS will be held on Friday, Jan. 14, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the California EDRS Project Office, at 3560 Business Drive, Suite 112. Refreshments will be served. No RSVP is necessary.

The development of the EDRS was a combined effort at the health system. The UC Davis Center for Health and Technology is performing the administrative and contractual oversight. Information Systems is providing IT infrastructure support, and the Biomedical Informatics and Consulting Service has overall responsibility for the project and the development of the software.

Michael Hogarth, assistant professor in the Departments of Pathology and Internal Medicine, is the principal investigator for the project. Glenna Globar, assistant adjunct professor in the Department of Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine is the project manager.

The EDRS ultimately will be placed in the public domain, allow other states to obtain the source code, make modifications and implement their own systems, based on the California EDRS.

Every year, the Department of Health Services receives about 240,000 death certificates — all of them individual pieces of paper that must be alphabetized, sorted by county and filed by hand under the current system. Most deaths in California are routine and do not require a lengthy investigation of the cause. Under these circumstances, local authorities are able to issue death certificates, listing the cause and type of death, in a matter of days.

However, deaths involving unknown or suspicious reasons require a lengthy coroner’s investigation, and death certificates remain incomplete as they go from mortuaries to coroners to local health departments and, lastly, to the Department of Health Services. In some cases, family members of deceased persons can wait almost a year to receive a completed death certificate. Although coroner’s investigations will still take several months, once that process is done, a family should not have to wait more than two weeks to receive a copy of a completed, amended death certificate with the EDRS.

According to the Department of Health Services, at least 15 percent of all death certificates are amended in some way.

Completed death certificates are required to settle estates. In California, mortuaries are required to receive a death certificate signed by a coroner or doctor before they may proceed with a burial or cremation. The EDRS will be accessible to mortuaries, coroners, doctors, hospitals, local health departments and the state, eliminating the need to transfer to each other a single piece of paper.

Participation in the EDRS is not mandatory, but it involves no cost beyond an Internet connection.
However, even doctors without Internet access eventually will be able to telephone in a coded signature.

An added benefit of the EDRS is that it will allow for improved tracking of national health trends. California accounts for 10 percent of the deaths in the United States, meaning that one out of 10 death-certificate-based data used by the federal government comes from California. The EDRS will improve data quality, turnaround times and provide a means for the automated verification of death by federal agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control.