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Hospitals on their own when body unclaimed PDF Print E-mail
Written by DeadGirl   
Wednesday, 31 August 2005
Hospitals on their own when body unclaimed
By Jessica Heslam
Tuesday, August 30, 2005
Boston Herald

Boston, MA - Because there is no state law regulating how hospitals should handle a body that hasn't been claimed, hospitals have their own policies.
It's up to hospitals to track down relatives or friends once a patient's cause of death is known.

When a body is unclaimed at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, officials search the person's medical record, contact doctors, the hospital's legal department and the Medical Examiner's office for missing-person reports. Burial arrangements are made if the body is unclaimed after 30 days.

In the past 10 years, Boston Medical Center, which gets a ``fair'' number of unclaimed patients, has never buried an unidentified person, said Chris Andry, administrative director of BMC's Department of Anatomic Pathology.

If the person has been identified but the doctor who signed the death certificate can't reach relatives, BMC initiates its ``next-of-kin'' policy.

This includes contacting social services, the state Department of Transitional Assistance, police, the Department of Veterans Affairs and shelters, as well as re-reviewing the patient's medical chart and doing an Internet phone search. Lastly, a notice is put in a local newspaper.

If the body hasn't been claimed in four weeks, BMC contracts with a funeral home and the body is buried at a Dorchester cemetery. A next-of-kin search also is done for unidentified bodies.

At Massachusetts General Hospital, the social work department tries to find relatives or others if an identified body hasn't been claimed after seven days. If the person has not been identified, which is rare.  MGH contacts homeless shelters and police to try to match fingerprints. If necessary, a hospital official said, they would distribute photographs to news outlets.
 
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