New rules for determining deaths. Electronic death cards and a new role for the coroner

The Ministry of Health has submitted for consultation a draft law amending the Law on Medical Activities and certain other laws. The aim of the draft is to comprehensively regulate the issue of ascertaining and documenting deaths, as well as drawing up birth charts and birth charts with a stillbirth annotation.

The current regulations, concerning deaths outside the hospital, are still based on the 1959 Law on Cemeteries and Burial of the Dead. As the health ministry points out, these regulations are inadequate to modern legal and organizational realities. They do not specify who is obliged to determine death outside the hospital, they do not specify the rules for financing these activities, and documentation is still kept in paper form.

The proposed amendment is intended to close these loopholes and bring the regulations in line with the modern health care system. The new regulations are to introduce:

• Clear rules for determining death, including inspection of the body, determination of the cause and time of death and the identity of the deceased,
• Identify the persons required to determine death - including the primary care physician, night and holiday care physician, home hospice physician, paramedic, emergency system nurse and coroner,
• regulating the institution of the coroner, who will operate under a contract with the governor and handle cases in which the cause of death cannot be clearly determined or there is no attending physician,
• procedures for deaths outside medical facilities - in homes, in public places or on transportation,
• electronic death certificate and birth certificate (including annotation of stillbirth), transmitted to civil registry offices, statistical services and the State Sanitary Inspectorate,
• Unified rules for financing activities related to the determination and documentation of deaths.

The reform also includes electronification of the entire process. The introduction of e-cards is expected to make procedures less burdensome for doctors and officials, speed up the circulation of information and improve the quality of data used in public statistics. Electronic records are also expected to increase data security and reduce the risk of unauthorized access.

The draft also provides for separate regulations for the Armed Forces of the Republic of Poland with regard to ascertaining death and documenting the death of soldiers or civilians serving in Polish military contingents abroad.

The Health Ministry stresses that the new regulations will provide the state with full and reliable information on the causes of death, and citizens with transparent and less burdensome procedures. The new regulations are also expected to relieve the burden on doctors, who now often perform activities beyond their professional duties.

Project: TU

Source: RCL