NEW ZEALAND HEALTH INFORMATION SERVICE
A Guide to Certifying Causes of Death
NZHIS has produced this guide to help medical practitioners complete accurate Medical Certificates of Causes of Death. As well as comprehensive instructions and advice, the guide contains 26 pages of examples of correctly and incorrectly written certificates.
An amendment to the Births, Deaths, and Marriages Registration Act 1995 came into effect in November 2000 – a new Section 37 was substituted, and Section 38 was amended. These changes have been reflected in the publication.
Along with coroners’ reports, medical certificates are the main source of cause of death information from which underlying cause of death statistics are collated. These statistics are recognised as an important objective measure of the health status of the population, and are widely used to monitor specific causes of death for research purposes and for policy development.
Some material in this Guide is now out of date and NZHIS is currently working on writing an updated version. In the meantime please read the information below with regard to the:
- Reporting of maternal deaths by medical practitioners
- Coroners Act 2006
Reporting of Maternal deaths
Please disregard the instructions on page 21 of the guide about the reporting of maternal deaths and be guided instead by the information below.
Section 110(1)(b) of the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Act 2000 (“NZPHD Act”) repealed the Maternal Mortality Research Act 1968 (including its amendments). In its place the NZPHD Act set up a new regime governing mortality review committees (section 18 and Schedule 5 refers). The definition of maternal death was also repealed.
Medical practitioners should note that any deaths which meet the definition in section 13(1)(d) of the Coroners Act 2006 must be reported pursuant to the provisions of that Act. There are also provisions in Schedule 5 of the NZPHD Act that govern the supply of information to mortality review committees. Any person may be required to supply information to such committees pursuant to the NZPHD Act.
Coroners Act 2006
The Coroners Act 1988 has been repealed and replaced by the Coroners Act 2006 which comes into force on 1 July 2007. The extract of the Coroners Act 1988 on page 54 of this Guide should be replaced with the extract of the Coroners Act 2006, Section 13. This can be downloaded as a Word Document (30 KB).
We welcome feedback on inclusions and amendments to future updates of this publication. Please forward suggestions to the Team Leader, Mortality Collection, NZHIS, by email to mortality_administration@nzhis.govt.nz or phone (04) 816 2864, or by mail to PO Box 5013, Wellington.
The full publication can be downloaded as a PDF file (680 kB).
The printed publication is currently unavailable.
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