Photo: 123rf
An advocacy group wants to see funeral directors removed as the middleman in cremations, saying it's costing people money.
Death Without Debt spokesperson Fergus Wheeler explained two doctors were required to sign off on a death for cremation - the first would have seen the body and made notes about the cause of death, and a second doctor was required sign-off on that paperwork.
Currently, the system was set up so that people needed a funeral director to facilitate this second sign-off, with funeral directors billing the family for doing so - but legally, it did not have to be done this way.
Wheeler said a small tweak to the Ministry of Health's existing online death documents system could fix this, ideally allowing the first doctor's paperwork to be uploaded to the cloud to be checked by the second doctor, without the need for the funeral director to forward it on.
He said the cloud already existed, it just required a change of process.
"You can if you understand the medical referee system, sometimes, if you're lucky, get through the system," Wheeler said. "But 99.9 percent of the public have no idea how the system works."
As well as giving funeral directors permission to charge a service fee for this administration task, it also gave them the opportunity to "hook people into a package deal", charging grieving families for things they did not need.
The Funeral Directors Association strongly denied this allegation to the select committee.
With cremations now making up 80 percent of deaths - in part because the cost was still a lot less than a burial - Wheeler said this affected a lot of people.
"We don't blame the funeral industry particularly for this," Wheeler said. "It's actually the Ministry of Health [who have] known that the system has been dysfunctional for decades."
The Health Select Committee's final report into funeral debt was released last week.
In it, it agreed that "the current process and regulations impose high costs on the public and create a barrier for people who want to organise their own funerals, particularly when their loved ones are about to be cremated".
It encouraged the ministry to prioritise further work on updating the cremation regulations, and requested a report on the planned changes to regulations before the end of this parliamentary term.
"We also encourage the ministry to consider making all documents relating to cremation available on the Death Documents website. We note that the Ministry's planned work could address the current barriers to DIY funerals."
But Wheeler said those directives to the ministry were weak and lacked urgency.
"You've got a pretty major social problem with funeral debt happening, and the Health Select Committee have said, well, let's fix it sometime in the next few years. It's not quick enough, it's not urgent enough," he said.
The Funeral Directors Association, which represents about 75 percent of funeral homes, was approached for comment by the select committee, and its comments were included in the final report.
According to the report, it "strongly refuted what it described as Death Without Debt's 'allegations of predatory behaviour' on the part of funeral homes, and said that, on the contrary, the industry has a 'caring, respectful, and professional approach'."
"It maintained that, without public funding of funeral services, private funeral companies must fill the void. In so doing, these companies incur property, insurance, compliance, staffing, and other costs, which must be covered by the prices they charge."
It suggested the government introduce a legislative mandate for funeral prices to be transparent - it required price transparency from its members and said it encouraged them to offer free consultations for those pre-planning and pre-paying for funerals.
Comments from the Ministry of Health were also included in the report.
It acknowledged the current burial and cremation processes were "outdated and disproportionate, and needed modernisation".
It said previous work in this area had been delayed by Covid-19, but it was in discussions with the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment and the Department of Internal Affairs about modernising the regulation of the funeral sector.
"The ministry told us it is committed to reviewing the cremation regulations in 2025," the report said.
The Funeral Directors Association, the Ministry of Health and the select committee have been approached for further comment.
Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
