WESTFIELD – Following the recent closure of the Ryder Funeral Home in South Hadley, reports have surfaced that the home, which opened in 1953, had failed to properly document it’s pre-paid funeral contract activity for the past three years.
The shocking revelation that the home was storing bodies in various forms of decomposition was made all the more unsettling by the lack of proper pre-need documentation which, according to a report by The Daily Hampshire Gazette, is hardly unusual statewide.
According to that report, state regulators sent notices to over 200 funeral homes throughout Massachusetts last month informing them of their failure to comply with the state’s June 30 pre-need report filing deadline.
The Westfield News has yet to receive a list of those funeral homes from the Division of Professional Licensure (DPL) after filing a Freedom of Information request on July 25.
Wednesday, An Act Modernizing Licensing Operations At The Division of Professional Licensure was signed by Gov. Deval L. Patrick to “streamline and improve” the licensing process in the state.
A spokesperson for the DPL said yesterday that, while the legislation affects funeral homes in small ways, there is nothing in the new bill, which they said has been in the works for several years, regarding increased pre-need oversight on the Division of Funeral Directors and Embalmers.
While the names of the funeral homes who failed to file pre-need reports in 2014 are still unknown, several homes in greater Westfield say they take great care and go to painstaking measures to ensure their filings are up-to-date.
“We archive all of our pre-need arrangements in a computer system, and the form goes to the state indicating how many families you’ve made arrangements with on a pre-need basis, that have funded their arrangements, and where the money is,” said Frank A. Forastiere, president of Forastiere Funeral Homes. “We have a realtime database and when it is time to send the report in, we send it in.”
Forastiere, who runs the funeral home on College Highway in Southwick, said when he renews his license with the DPL, he has to sign off that he has filed up-to-date pre-need reports.
“I don’t know why someone wouldn’t do it. I would imagine they’re busy doing other things, serving families and conducting funerals, and it slips through the cracks,” he said, adding that he believes the Ryder situation to be a “very unique and distinctly unusual event.”
Forastiere said that following the state’s filing procedure is an integral part of his business.
“All of these laws are about protecting the consumer. We’re interested in complying with them because we benefit from them in the end,” he said. “We want people to see the benefit of making a pre-arrangement with us and we deliver. We do it exactly to the requirements.”
In Westfield, James R. Adams, funeral director for the Firtion-Adams Funeral Home, said that he’s only aware of one inspector who handles funeral homes statewide.
“They have only one person working on everything but they still have the ability to hold someone’s license up,” he said. “If those forms aren’t provided, they have the ability to not provide a person with their license.”
Adams said that he’s unaware how often the DPL checks on each funeral home in the state.
“I know I have somebody who stops in once a year, and he takes three of my pre-need files out of my cabinet to make sure it’s done correctly,” he said. “But he’s one guy for the whole state.”
Adams stated that the scrutiny over funeral homes in the Commonwealth has come at an interesting juncture.
“A lot of things came to a head at once,” he said. “The thing in South Hadley… the owner hired someone who’d been working there for 10 years. The guy quit, and the owner was nowhere to be found.”
As to how the Ryder Funeral Home could have continued operating without filing a report, Adams said a funeral director could have just put numbers down.
“I don’t know what the checks and balances are. I’m not sure if anyone has ever checked mine except for the guy that comes in once a year,” said Adams, who said 95 percent of the money given to him in pre-need accounts is placed in an insurance policy. “I put everyone’s policies with their paperwork at the funeral home, and they can have the policy if they want to hang onto it.”
Morgan Mitchell, an Easthampton funeral director and chair of the state Board of Registration of Funeral Directors and Embalmers, said that having only one inspector, who also handles the state’s 500-plus veterinary clinics, for the state’s over 500 funeral homes is a major issue.
“That is a budgetary problem and it is something that is very difficult for any board or department to control,” he said, adding that it is the consensus of the board to be more open to regulations pertaining to pre-need.
“There needs to be some strengthening of both rules, which the board comes up with, and statutes, which are made by the legislature,” he said. “We want to make it mandatory, with both bank’s trust departments and insurance companies, that the only checks they can cash are written by a third party, which is the family itself. We no longer want funeral homes taking money and writing a check to the insurance company.”
Adams and Mitchell agreed that consumers need to become savvier when dealing with pre-need arrangements to avoid being swindled by homes that aren’t putting the money in a trust or an insurance policy.
“Unless families tell the funeral home ‘Hey, I want to see my insurance policy or my trust account balance’… if they don’t ask for that, it’s very difficult for any board to know what is going on,” said Adams. “If they ask, the funeral home would have to provide that and it is at that point they would be caught.”
“They (families) aren’t doing all the due diligence they should, and it’s understandable – it’s a very personal matter. But they need to be sure of whats going on. They need to ask questions,” said Mitchell, admitting that the state board of funeral directors needs to get tougher with directors whose paperwork isn’t up to date.
“Have each funeral director in the Commonwealth, when he files for his license in October, file all the necessary paperwork that goes with it,” he said. “If a funeral director doesn’t send in his pre-need report or any other paperwork, then he doesn’t get a license. Thirty days after you don’t have a license, you can’t operate anymore.”
“The board is a quasi-judicial board. We deal with the problems when the problems arise. DPL is the administrative arm,” he added. “They do the inspections and they bring the issues to us, and sometimes that is where communication and tracking gets lost. That is where we need to tighten up.”
Mitchell said the DPL has over 30 licensing boards under their purview, from electricians to hairdressers, and have seen staff reductions.
“Our secretary is the executive secretary of three boards. Her executive director has nine boards underneath her. So they aren’t just dedicated to the funeral portion,” he said. “Its budgets. Life has changed, but when these issues arise, you need to figure out what has gone wrong and where the communication has been lax. We’re really looking into it.”
Mitchell stated that the Board of Registration of Funeral Directors and Embalmers and the DPL share equal blame in the lack of oversight.
“We’re at fault. The buck stops with us. We made a mistake somewhere, and the most important thing for us is to tell the press, because the press is trying to solve the problem,” Mitchell said. “We should all work together to solve the problem.”
