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NEW YORK -- Martel Lewis knew her father was a special man, but she didn't realize how unique he was until two months after his death.
When Ricard Lewis' death certificate arrived, his daughter noticed that the 83-year-old had been pregnant at the time of his demise.
Lewis evidently isn't the only Manhattan miracle male. Other family members have reported receiving death certificates containing mistaken and just plain oddball entries. Their complaints led to several audits of New York City's Health Department and its Bureau of Vital records.
But New York isn't alone in its death documentation woes. Inaccurate death certificates are a nationwide problem that has lead to an effort, spearheaded by the Social Security Administration, to develop a nationwide electronic death registry, or EDR, system.
Virtually everyone -- public health officials, physicians and funeral directors -- agree that an EDR would result in fewer errors on death certificates. The system would tag obvious errors, like pregnant males, and would let certificates be processed, corrected and delivered a lot faster.
Without certified, correct copies of death certificates, survivors are unable to settle estates, collect insurance payments or withdraw money from bank accounts.
But, despite the urgency, developing a working EDR system has been a challenge. A New York pilot program to develop one was recently deemed an absolute failure by City Comptroller William Thompson.
New York City began work on the system with the Social Security Administration, the National Center for Health Statistics and the National Association for Public Health Statistics and Information Systems in 1998. After an expenditure of $3.2 million, the system had not "registered even one death" by 2003, according to Thompson.
To blame, in part, was the New York City Department of Health's procurement process, according to a recent audit of the system performed by the comptroller's office.
But city officials said that complications inherent in designing an EDR system may have doomed the project from the start.
Electronic birth registration is already in place in many states across the nation, including New York, according to Dr. Isaac Weisfuse, deputy commissioner for disease control, who spoke about EDR at a recent city hall meeting.
Registering births is easy, Weisfuse explained. People tend to have children in one of a limited number of hospitals. But death can happen anywhere.
The paperwork is also more complicated for deaths. Filing a birth certificate is a one-person job, but a death certificate requires at least two -- the physician who provides medical data and a funeral director who provides information about the burial procedure. A medical examiner may also be involved.
And an EDR system needs to be hack-proof.
Data collected by an EDR has to be securely transmitted to Social Security and the local health departments. The EDR must allow burial permits and cremation authorizations to be issued quickly. And it must provide a way to get copies of death certificates to family members, who need them to settle estates and other legal matters.
"One fraudulent transaction -- for example, a faked death -- could seriously undermine public confidence in the system," Weisfuse said at a city council meeting in March. "And an Internet-based system will inevitably create an attractive target for this kind of fraud."
In late 1999, New Jersey began work on its own EDR system, which was up and running in 2000. But according to the New Jersey State Registrar's office, the program is still in the pilot stage, with only a small percentage of hospitals using the system.
New York state, New Hampshire, Iowa and Minnesota have also implemented tests of EDR programs. EDR is already being used in some European countries, such as Scotland, and on some Caribbean islands.
The Social Security Administration is currently calling for proposals for EDR systems. Documentation is due to the SSA before Aug. 13.
The Metropolitan Funeral Directors Association has been pushing for EDR since 1994, when it offered to form a public-private partnership with New York to pay for, develop and implement a system.
But the city opted to develop EDR on its own, and the same paper-based system that was used then is still in place now.
Under New York's current system, funeral directors must obtain a completed death certificate from a doctor, and then bring it to the Office of Vital Records, where they often wait in line up to two hours before a clerk checks the certificate.
If it's not approved, often due to missing information, the funeral director has to have the doctor make corrections, and then return with the revised certificate. It can take three to six weeks to obtain a copy of a death certificate; correcting and getting a new copy can take an additional eight to 12 weeks.
An EDR would allow certificates to be processed, corrected and delivered within days, experts said.
"It's a bureaucratic, ridiculous, medieval setup," said Greg Gorkin, a funeral home assistant, while waiting in line to file certificates at New York's Vital Records Department on Friday.
"Filing death certificates is going to kill me."
