What to Do When Someone Dies in the Hospital

When someone dies in a hospital or a care facility, the staff take over the first steps. A doctor confirms the death and records the time. Nurses handle the body. The initial paperwork gets started. That is a relief, and it can also feel like being moved along quickly while you are still taking in that the person is dead.

Here is the split, in plain terms: what the hospital does, and what you actually decide. Most of what you decide is not due on the same day. If the death happened somewhere else, the first steps are different. See what to do when someone dies at home. For the full sequence of what to handle and when, use our when someone dies checklist.

In the first hours, your job is smaller than it feels. The staff manage the medical and legal mechanics. You do not have to organize anything.

What is actually on you: decide whether you want time in the room with the body, and take it if you do. Tell close family. Then, when you are ready, name a funeral home or cremation provider so they can collect the body. That is the whole list for the first hours. The autopsy question, organ donation, the belongings, and the death certificate all get handled after, and most of them are handled by other people. You can ask the staff to slow down. They do this every week; you do not.

A doctor confirms the death and records the time and cause as far as it is known. This is the pronouncement, and in a hospital it is done for you.^[1] Nurses remove tubes and lines if you want to sit with the body first, and they will give you time in the room.

Someone will then talk to you about next steps: the nurse, a hospital chaplain, a social worker, or in larger hospitals a decedent affairs or patient affairs office. In many hospitals a call also goes out to the regional organ procurement organization, which the law requires; that is covered below. After that, the body is moved to the hospital morgue, where it can stay for a limited time while you decide on a funeral home. How long varies by hospital, so ask.

The hospital does, at first. Staff move the body to the hospital morgue and hold it there. The hospital does not arrange the funeral or the cremation, and it will not pick a provider for you.

Once you name a funeral home or crematory, that provider sends someone to the hospital to collect the body, and you sign a release authorizing it. Morgue holding time is limited and differs from one hospital to the next; some hold the body several days at no charge and then start a storage fee. Ask how many days you have so a fee does not start without warning. When you are comparing providers, our guide on how to arrange a funeral walks through the choices and the costs.

No. This is the part families most often get wrong under pressure. You do not have to choose a funeral home in the first hour, or even the first day. The body stays in the morgue until you name a provider, which is what gives you room to decide.

Use that time. Funeral and cremation prices vary a lot between providers in the same town, and the first call is not always the cheapest. You can also ask for time in the room before the body is moved, and you can tell the staff you are not ready to pick a provider yet. None of that is unusual, and none of it causes a problem.

An autopsy is an examination of the body to confirm or determine the cause of death. For an expected, natural death in the hospital, it is usually optional.

The hospital may offer one. A hospital autopsy needs the consent of the next of kin, there is often no charge to the family for one the hospital requests, and you can say no. Separately, some deaths must be reported to the county medical examiner or coroner. Deaths that are sudden, unexpected, violent, or unattended are the common ones. In those cases the medical examiner decides whether an autopsy is required, and that autopsy does not need the family's consent. Which deaths must be reported is set by state law and varies by state, so if you are unsure whether it applies, ask the hospital or the medical examiner's office directly. For a death that follows a known illness, this usually does not come up.

Organ and tissue donation is handled by a federally designated organ procurement organization, or OPO, not by the doctors who treated the person. That separation is on purpose: the medical team's job is care, and the decision about donation sits with a different organization.^[2]

Hospitals are required to notify the OPO of deaths and imminent deaths. The OPO checks the donor registry and reviews whether donation is medically possible. If it is, someone from the OPO, not the treating doctor, contacts the family. If the person registered as a donor, at the DMV or at organdonor.gov, that registration counts as legal consent and the OPO honors it, so the choice is often already made. Most deaths do not lead to organ donation because of medical timing, but eye and tissue donation are possible in more situations. The OPO may call you even when donation turns out not to be possible.

You do not fill it out. After a hospital death, the attending physician or a hospital medical certifier records the cause of death, and the funeral home files the death certificate with the state or county vital records office and orders certified copies for you.^[1]

Order more copies than you think you need. Banks, life insurers, and government agencies usually want an original certified copy, not a photocopy. How fast you get them varies by state, often one to three weeks. The funeral home also usually reports the death to the Social Security Administration, but confirm that it did rather than assume.^[3] You will need those certificates for almost everything that comes next, including closing the person's accounts.

Clothing, a phone, glasses, a wallet, jewelry. The hospital collects the person's personal property and holds it, and you can usually take it the same day or come back for it later. Ask the nurse or the patient affairs office where it is.

Ask for a written list of what is being released and check it against what you expected. Valuables like rings or cash are often logged separately in a hospital safe, and releasing those can require your ID and, sometimes, proof that you are the next of kin or the executor. Anything left in the room gets bagged and labeled. If the death happened in a nursing home or assisted living rather than a hospital, the steps are similar, but ask that facility how it handles property and how long it holds it.

This page is general information, not legal or medical advice. Steps vary by hospital and by state, so confirm the specifics with the hospital and, where it applies, your state's vital records or medical examiner's office. For our sources and how we check them, see our Sources and Methodology.