GP practices asked to ensure 12-month stock of death certificates

GP practices have been asked to ensure they hold enough quantities of death certificates to last them a year, under fresh guidance.

The Department of Health and Social Care issued updated information this week for practices in England and Wales setting out the processes to follow for ordering and retaining medical certificates of cause of death (MCCDs).

It reminded surgeries that use MCCDs they were sent guidance on how to order more – and a unique passcode – when the new MCCDs were introduced as part of the statutory medical examiner system on 9 September 2024. 

Under this system, GPs are required to engage with local medical examiners to agree death certificates for all non-coronial deaths.

The latest DHSC guidance has said if practices have less than 12 months’ worth of certificates they should order more and explains what steps to take if they have lost, the guidance and/or unique passcode.

Practices in Wales have been told to order the bilingual MCCD only.

Meanwhile, the guidance has also reiterated the need to keep completed counterfoils for two years in line with NHS England’s records management code of practice and NHS Wales’ records management code of practice 2022.

Where GPs scan a completed MCCD before emailing it to their medical examiner office they ‘must securely store the paper copy of the completed MCCD and any partially completed MCCDs until the medical examiner has confirmed the cause of death to you and sent the completed MCCD to the registrar’, the guidance says.

After that, all duplicate copies of the MCCD, held by the attending practitioner and medical examiner, can be destroyed.

Finally, practices should also make sure they securely destroy unused booklets of the MCCD  in use before 9 September 2024.

For partially used booklets, the unused MCCDs should be removed and securely destroyed but the counterfoils retained.

Again, the handling of any completed counterfoils should meet the requirements of NHS England’s records management code or NHS Wales records management code of practice, depending on location, the guidance says.

A version of this article was first publish on our sister title Management in Practice.