26:8-24.1 New Jersey Electronic Death Registration System (NJ-EDRS)

16. a. The State registrar shall establish and maintain the New Jersey Electronic Death Registration System or NJ-EDRS.

(1) The system shall be fully implemented no later than 18 months after the date of enactment of P.L.2003, c.221, and shall be the required means of death registration and certification for any death or fetal death occurring in this State, subject to any exception that may be approved by the State registrar in the case of a specific death or fetal death. All participants in the death registration process, including, but not limited to, the State registrar, local registrars, deputy registrars, alternate deputy registrars, subregistrars, the Chief State Medical Examiner, Deputy Chief State Medical Examiner, county or intercounty medical examiners, assistant county or intercounty medical examiners, funeral directors, attending physicians and resident physicians, licensed health care facilities, and other public or private institutions providing medical care, treatment or confinement to persons, shall be required to utilize the NJ-EDRS to provide the information that is required of them by statute or regulation.

(2) The State registrar may provide for a phased implementation of the system, beginning seven months after the date of enactment of P.L.2003, c.221, by requiring certain users, who are designated by the State registrar on a geographic or other basis for this purpose, to commence utilization of the system.

(3) Beginning no later than six months after the date of enactment of P.L.2003, c.221, the State registrar shall authorize and provide material support, in the form of system access, curriculum guidelines and user registration capability and authority, to the principal trade associations or professional organizations representing persons affected by implementation of the NJ-EDRS, for the purposes of providing training and education with regard to the NJ-EDRS. The State registrar may conduct such education and training, or authorize other entities to do so on his behalf; however, these activities shall not be construed as restricting the training and education activities of any affected trade association or professional organization, including the location, manner, fees or other means of conducting those activities on the part of the association or organization.

b. The NJ-EDRS shall, at a minimum, provide for:

(1) the direct transmission of burial permit documentation to the originating funeral home in an electronic form capable of output to a local printer;

(2) an overnight mail system for the delivery of NJ-EDRS-generated death certificates by the State registrar and local registrars, the cost of which shall be chargeable to the funeral director of record;

(3) an automated notification system to alert other responsible parties to pending cases, including notification to or from alternate local registrars;

(4) a systematic electronic payment method by which all fees are taken from accounts for which funeral homes are financially responsible and distributed, as appropriate, to the State registrar or local registrars as payment for the issuance of permits, the recording of records, the making of certified copies of death certificates, or for other charges that may be incurred;

(5) a legally binding system of digital authentication in lieu of signatures for the responsible parties and a means of assuring database security that permits users to enter the system from multiple sites and includes contemporaneous and remote data security methods to protect the system from catastrophic loss or intrusions, as well as a method of data encryption for transmission;

(6) the capacity for authorized users to retrieve data comprising the death certification record;

(7) the capacity to electronically amend and correct death records;

(8) electronic notification, upon completion of the death record and issuance of a burial permit, of the decedent's name, Social Security number and last known address and the informant to: the federal Social Security Administration, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the Division of Medical Assistance and Health Services in the Department of Human Services, the Department of Labor and Workforce Development and such other governmental agencies as the State registrar determines will substantially contribute to safeguarding public benefit programs and diminish the criminal use of a decedent's name and other identifying information; and the New Jersey State Funeral Directors Association, in the case of a decedent participating in one of its funeral expense payment programs, in such a manner as to enable it to fulfill its fiduciary obligations for the payment of the decedent's final funeral and burial expenses;

(9) sufficient data documentation to meet contemporary and emerging standards and expectations of vital record archiving; and

(10) continuous 24-hour-a-day technical support for all authorized users of the system.

c. A provider of information that is required to complete a death certificate, or who is subject to the provisions of law governing the NJ-EDRS, shall not be deemed to be acting as a local registrar, deputy registrar, alternate deputy registrar or subregistrar solely by virtue of permitting other providers of information to gain access to the NJ-EDRS by using those other providers' identifying information.

L.2003, c.221, s.16; amended 2013, c.274, s.2; 2018, c.62, s.31.