A recent report (November 2025) from the State of New York Department of Health with the results of an audit “which covered April 2019 through November 2023, concluded that the state Department of Health and the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene must improve oversight and coordination to address significant deficiencies in the practice of funeral directing” according to the reporting from this article in the Albany (NY) Times Union.

The audit covered that time period listed above in which, according to the report there were 801,421 deaths in the state.  There is some interesting data in the report that I found, but before I report on that I’ll post what seemed to interest the New York State Department of Health and the various news sources.

The audit report, in its entirety from the Department of Health can be found here.

Among other issues, here are four areas where the report mentioned that New York’s funeral establishments can improve:

• Risks with handling of remains.  In this area the report suggested four areas that could be improved upon.

1.  Verifying deaths by the funeral director via pulsation and and listening for a heartbeat via stethoscope or putting an ear over the chest.  Audit workers confirmed that a full 1/2 of funeral directors who were asked said they did not perform these verifications of death.
2.  Funeral directors could reduce mis-identification by labeling or tagging of bodies
3.  There is a “lack of assurance of acceptable preparation rooms”.  Evidently in 2006 the NY DOH stopped inspections and now relies on an annual photo of the preparation room.  Some firms seem to submit the same photo year-after-year so there is no “assurance” the room is in compliance.
4. Burial and cremation permits are not to be issued until after the Death Certificate has been filed.  Evidently, it is widespread not to follow this practice as the audit found 2,545 death certificates that were registered after the disposition took place.  Those death certificates came from 872 different funeral directors.

• Funeral Director and Firm Registrations.

1. It seems that the biggest issue with this point is that there may be funeral homes with multiple branches where some of those multiple branches are not registered.

• Death certificates with duplicate or no Social Security numbers.

1. The audit found 773 Social Security numbers that were used for more than one person.  That affected 146 death certificates and these certificates were filed by 111 funeral directors from 108 funeral firms.

• Reporting firm closures and other firm changes. 

1. There is somewhat of a “muddled” situation between primary firms and secondary firms at the same locations.  Because of no inspections the DOH has reason to believe that many of these licenses are not up to date and or correct.

Tom Anderson
Funeral Director Daily

Funeral Director Daily take:  As so often happens with these types of reports authored by those not in the Death Care profession, much gets lost in the translation of what really is important.   For instance, when you have 773 Social Security numbers that are duplicated that means one thing if it is on a 10,000 death caseload, but it means a completely different thing if that is in the context of over 800,000 deaths.

And yes, funeral directors should be reporting those numbers correct, but in most instances, they are at the mercy of the number that was provided them by the family.  Keeping proper records should be a goal of all in the profession.

Also, the problem with the prep room photos and the potential for funeral director and funeral firm registrations probably gets corrected if the New York State Health Department puts an inspector or two back on the road to check on these establishments.  My guess, is that the State has other priorities that take the resources that should probably be used for this purpose but are designated for other programs.  . . . and, if you don’t fund inspections, then you cannot expect to find the bad actors in the bunch.

The State of New York is scheduled for a 2026 annual budget of $254 billion.  If better funeral home enforcement was a priority, it would probably take less than $500,000 to make it happen.

Finally. . . some statistics I found interesting:  One of the statistics I found very interesting in the audit was one you could probably only get from an audit of Death Certificates.  It was the statistic on the place of death.  Here’s what they found for those New York residents between 2019 and 2023 — a period that did cover the pandemic era deaths:

1.  46.3%  –  Hospital
2.  30.8%  –  Residence
3.  17.2%  –  Nursing Home
4.    3.4%  –  Hospice Facility

Anecdotally, I think those numbers represent a real change from when I started in the profession in 1980.  And, I think the change represents the value of Hospice and how it has moved forward and been almost universally accepted.  My guess, is that when I started the ranking would have been (1) Nursing Home, (2) Hospital, (3) Residence.  I think the higher ranking of Residence at this time reflects the fact that many in those residences are receiving Hospice care at home.

I also wonder if Hospital deaths are higher than normal on this list, simply because it was conducted during some of the pandemic era dates.

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As of July 1, 2025, Natural Organic Reduction, or Terramation as some call it, became a legal form of disposition in the state of Minnesota.  According to information that I believe reliable, Minnesota was the 11th state to pass legislation permitting such and the 13th state to activate the process.  The process of Natural Organic Reduction (NOR) or Terramation is labeled by many as “human composting”.

On the same day that NOR was legal in Minnesota, Washington state provider of such services Return Home issued this press release stating that they will be expanding to Minnesota.  Return Home, you can access their website here,  also announced that they will open a new facility in Minnesota for the process and also made this statement in their press release, “The expansion marks a significant step forward in Return Home’s mission to bring gentle, sustainable death care to communities across the country. With Minnesota’s progressive values, cultural richness, and long-standing environmental leadership, the state is a natural fit for terramation—a process that gently transforms human remains into soil.” 

Up until now and until a facility is built in Minnesota, Minnesotans who have wanted to have NOR/Terramation as their method of human disposition have had to work with local funeral homes and have their remains shipped to the state of Washington to implement the process.  One Minnesota funeral provider, Mueller Mortuary, has implemented a division for what they term “Green Burial Services and Options” which includes “Composting” as one of the options.

That division is called “Interra Green Burial by Mueller Mortuary” and their website can be accessed by clicking here.

Related Information —  Here is a recent notice from the Minnesota Funeral Director’s Association concerning the implementation of NOR as an alternative human disposition method.

Related Information —  Here is a video news story and print article from NBC Palm Springs (CA) about the Minnesota law and Return Home.

Tom Anderson
Funeral Director Daily

Funeral Director Daily take:  According to the Cremation Association of North America, the cremation rate in Minnesota during the calendar year 2022 was 72.7% compared to a national average for that year of 59%.  According to the Minnesota Department of Health, the cremation rate in Minnesota in 1982 was 7.6% and in 1961 — 64 years ago — it was 1.8%.

I give you those statistics to show you how fast things can change.  I live in Minnesota and I was a practicing funeral director during the swift percentage run-up on cremation over the past 40 years.  Minnesotans are “open minded” and willing to try new things. . . . That may be one reason that Return Home decided to invest in their 2nd facility in the state.

As a funeral director, I can remember traditional casketed funeral families decision making processes on selecting cremation.  One of the factors in the process of going to a high percentage cremation rate was that once a family chose cremation as the human disposition for the first member of the family unit, there was generally no going back to traditional casketed burials for the family with future deaths.

I wonder if that might be the same situation with those that opt in for NOR?

Finally — It was Katrina Spade, who you can learn about here, who pioneered the process and business of Natural Organic Reduction.  She is involved with her own NOR business/funeral home in the state of Washington.  I’ve told people this before and I still believe that it could be true.  The process of “human composting” seems to resonate with people I talk to.

Cremation choice went from 1.8% of the populace in Minnesota in 1961 to  70% roughly 60 years later.  Could the same happen with NOR over the next century?  If it does and Death Care disposition decisions are changed that drastically, one hundred years from now when people read about the most influential people in the world during the 21st Century, Katrina Spade could well be in that discussion.

Here is the Recompose website.

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Georgia Is Now the 13th State to Legalize Natural Organic Reduction

Effective July 1, 2025, residents of the Peach State will have access to another option for disposition: natural organic reduction. Georgia governor Brian Kemp signed into law Senate Bill 241 on May 9 after both sides of the aisle showed overwhelming support for what the bill calls “organic human reduction.”

Georgia is the 13th state to legalize natural organic reduction, and the first since Maine’s NOR law was finalized in June 2024.

Toward a greener South

When it comes to expanding disposition options beyond flame cremation and traditional burial, Georgia has been one of the most progressive of the nine Southeastern states. Alkaline hydrolysis has been legal in Georgia since 2012; at the time, Florida was the only state in the region to offer AH, legalizing it in 2010. North Carolina, Alabama, and Tennessee followed suit in 2013, 2017, and 2018, respectively.

Georgia also boasts several green burial options. According to the Funeral Consumers Alliance of Georgia, there are “at least two exclusively natural burial grounds” in the state in addition to multiple hybrid cemeteries where green or natural burial sections exist alongside those reserved for traditional burials. One of those two operations has received certification from the Green Burial Council — one of just a handful in the entire Southeast to be GBC certified. 

Breaking new ground

When it comes to NOR, however, Georgia stands alone as the only Southeastern state to offer this relatively new, but rapidly growing disposition method. While NOR is (perhaps expectedly) legal all along the West Coast and in the majority of the Northeastern states, none of the other 12 states offering NOR are easily accessible to Southerners, at least from a geographic standpoint, as the above graphic from our friends at Return Home illustrates. Also evident from this graphic is that none of the other eight states in the region have even introduced NOR legislation.

This doesn’t mean, however, that Southerners who would like to be transformed into soil have to wait for Georgia’s deathcare community to set up NOR operations. Auburn, Washington’s Return Home and other established NOR providers, including Washington-based Recompose, often open their doors to out-of-state families who pay to transport their loved ones to their West Coast facilities. 

The founders of both Return Home and Recompose voiced support for Georgia’s new law, offering statements to Atlanta News First.

“Recompose is thrilled by the passage of the human composting bill in Georgia. […] We are proud to see the movement continue to grow so beautifully,” said Recompose founder/CEO Katrina Spade.

Return Home founder/CEO Micah Truman also “applauded the state’s legislative effort, saying the movement is about connection,” Atlanta News First reported. “I think we’re like salmon,” Truman said. “We want to go home.”

In October Choice Mutual, an end-of-life burial insurance company released the results of a nationwide survey of over 3,000 individuals that, among other things, asked where in their home state would they want their cremated ashes to be dispersed or scattered.

According to one article I read, the impetus for this survey was the discussion, explained here in a July Funeral Director Daily article, about a public discussion among the University of Nebraska Board of Regents.  As it turns out, the University of Nebraska is planning on improving the playing surface at their football stadium and one Regent suggested building a columbarium under the playing surface.

Turns out, that according to the Choice Mutual survey, that sporting venues carry with them a strong popularity with the public in many states for being a site of cremated remains disposition.   As it turns out historic venues such as Fenway Park in Massachusetts, Memorial Stadium at the University of Michigan, and Indianapolis Speedway in Indiana all were the top picks for their respective states.

The top state picks for each state and the survey overview can be viewed here.  Here are four items named in the overview as key takeaways from the survey as to generalizations where respondents would like their cremated remains to be dispersed:

• Areas of Natural Beauty
• Sports Arenas
• Urban and Historical Landmarks
• State-Specific Preferences

Some of the Landmarks or State Specific Preferences included the following:

• Missouri — The Gateway Arch
• Texas — The Alamo
• South Dakota — Mount Rushmore Monument

Related Article — Here is a recent article (November 14) from ESPN writer Andrea Adelson titled “Even in death college football fans want to be at their favorite stadiums”.  The provided link also has a short video interview of Ms. Adelson and ESPN show host Paul Finebaum discussing this phenomena.

Tom Anderson
Funeral Director Daily

Funeral Director Daily take:  Legalities aside, the idea of placing cremated remains in a cherished place rather than in a cemetery that one has never visited seems to resonate with many people.  Whether it be the Alamo, The Gateway Arch, a state park, or an athletic venue seems to bring “connection” in death for many.

And, when you couple that with some of the amounts being spent by the consumer for what I would call “Premium Cemetery Memorialization”, you start to wonder if some of these public areas, including college campuses, should create some type of park-like area for state-of-the-art cremation memorialization.

The following is an exerpt from Service Corporation International’s (SCI) CEO Tom Ryan in response to a question about consumer behavior in the area of cemetery space sales from the SCI Earnings Call of February 13, 2024:

(Ryan:)  “So I think on consumer behavior, if you take the high end, we continue to see the high end going strong. And some of that average price and remember, these are over $80,000 sales. But to give you some perspective, we probably had about 400 of those that averaged around, call it, $200,000 sale, back in 2019, around that era. We’ve almost doubled the number of contracts. So going from 400 contracts at that level to 800, slightly up on the average too. And so that seems some pretty significant growth and continues to look strong. And again, we’ve always said that probably correlates best with housing and stock market. And I’d say if there’s anywhere we’re not seeing as robust in activities we like, it is at that lower end”. 

Outside of the idea of premium spaces at existing cemeteries, I don’t think this phenomena of the amounts of money people will spend for memorialization at their “preferred venue” is thought about much.  Maybe a company like Better Place Forests is really on to something and ahead of the game with their development of “conservation forests” for this purpose.  As noted above from the survey, “Areas of Natural Beauty” are seen as a desired dispersal area and Better Place Forests has already made the investments to be able to serve those that choose that option.

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This article from the Tri-City Herald of Washington state lets us know that what will now be the largest funeral home operator in the Tri-Cities, Einan Funeral Homes, has grown by adding Hillcrest Funerals and Cremation to their group of funeral homes and cemeteries.

Those funeral homes are located in Kennewick and Pasco, Washington, and the article also lets the readers know that Hillcrest’s cremation company, EZ Cremate, was also part of the transaction.

In addition, the article states, “Einan’s parent company, Richland Cemetery Association, also bought Columbia River Cemetery, now named Columbia River Gardens Cemetery”.  Finally, according to the article,  the merged businesses employ 66 and now serve up to 1,000 families each year. . . “

The linked article also says this about Einan’s, “Einan’s is a for-profit, community-owned business governed by a board of directors and has been in business for more than 60 years.  Before the Hillcrest acquisition, it operated a single, full-service funeral home in Richland, as well as Compassionate Cremation Society and Coda Alternative Cremation and Funeral, an alternative funeral home in Kennewick”.

Hillcrest Funerals and Cremation was established in 2005 and was built into three funeral homes and a cemetery.  According to one of the former owners, Adrianna Titus, “We’re glad to have the local funeral home take on the Hillcrest legacy“.

Here is a website from one of the Einan properties.

The Tri-Cities of Washington state ––  According to this Wikipedia article, the Washington state Tri-Cities include Kennewick, Pasco, and Richland.  The cities come together at the confluence of the Snake, Yakima, and Columbia Rivers in the Columbia basin of Eastern Washington.

The three cities have a combined population of over 220,000 and the Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) is estimated to be over 300,000 people.

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Earlier this week we learned that Funeral Directors Life (FDL), based in Abilene, Texas,  was approved to sell preneed insurance in the state of Virginia.  As you can read from this press release, that announcement, following an earlier announcement making Michigan a legal Funeral Directors Life state, now makes Funeral Directors Life preneed available in 48 states and the District of Columbia.

Here’s what Kris Seale, President and CEO of Funeral Directors Life, said in prepared remarks in the press release, “Our team is excited about this incredible news.  We have a mission to be the best, most-respected provider of service to the funeral profession, and this news ensures we continue to honor our mission. We look forward to partnering with Virginia funeral homes to provide reliable and flexible preneed funeral offerings to improve their businesses and help them serve families well.”

Again, according to the press release, “Since 1981, FDL has helped funeral homes grow by aligning funeral homes’ business goals with preneed funeral strategies. The company also developed advanced preneed sales software, DIGicon®, and other industry-leading technology solutions to reduce data entry, save time per contract, and improve the preneed to at-need experience with software integrations.”

You can learn more about Funeral Directors Life at their website here.

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It has been pretty well publicized that former President Donald Trump may have assets seized by the State of New York to satisfy a judgement recently decided against his companies.  Turns out that is not the only siezure battle by a state against against someone as you can see from this article in the Vallejo Sun that the State of California is proceeding in an effort to seize about $50 million of trust funds set aside for cemetery mainenance.

The article points out that the State of California has already asked the operators of the cemeteries in question to surrender their licenses to manage cemeteries and are now proceeding in an action for the trust funds.  And, as you can see from this more recent February 2024 article, the cemeteries in question are being accused of being negligent in the upkeep of the cemeteries according to people who have family members buried there.

Make sure that you read the articles because there are a lot of plot twists already.  They include:

• “Questionable distributions” from cemetery funds, including about $1.35 million in payments to two companies managed by the cemetery owners and over $50,000 in cemetery funds purportedly used to pay for taxes in locations where the cemeteries did not operate

• A petition of over 1,500 people calling the conditions of at least one of the cemeteries ““disgraceful” due to the presence of weeds, gopher holes, unwatered grass, and buried headstones.

• An attempt by the owners to transfer over $50 million in trust funds to a religious nonprofit corporation called Evergreen Ministries, which now operates the cemeteries. Officers of that group are essentially the same that control the cemeteries today.

• Families of Jewish-faith people buried at a cemetery in question say that the transfer of what once was a secular cemetery with a Jewish section to a non-Jewish religious organization is “deeply troubling,”

Funeral Director Daily take:  This is truly one of those stories that if you included it in a fictional novel the story would be far-fetched to be believable.   What’s the old standard line? . . . .”You can’t make this stuff up“.  That line, in my opinion, is very true with this situation.

While this is an interesting story, it certainly is not unique when it comes to who holds and controls cemetery perpetual care trust funds.  And, I think we are bound to see more of these stories.

In my area of Minnesota there are hundreds of small country churches that have, or are being decommissioned, because there are just no longer small farms with families operating in the area to populate the churches.  Most are kept up by well-meaning and volunteer-minded individuals for the benefit of the cemeteries on the church grounds.  Taking some amount from the pepetual care funds to do this is what those perpetual care funds were designed for.

However, as families have left the area with their ancestors buried in these cemeteries they have donated to the perpetual care funds in order to have an ample “perpetual endowment” for the future.  In some cases those perpetual care funds have became quite large.

There are what I term “opportunist ministries” in our society who are on the look-out for these type of small parishes and offer to re-open the church to re-build the congregation, but many also have a suspected motive of getting their own church board in place and then being able to access the cemetery’s perpetual care fund for their own benefit. . . .such as paying out large stipends to board members until the fund is exhaustive.

In many states religious organizations are exempt from state or other governmental oversight on how they handle their endowment or cemetery funds.

Here’s an article entitled, “Is this the future of small rural cemeteries?” that Funeral Director Daily did on this topic almost two years ago.

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