One little knownaspect of what we do at Phaneuf Funeral Homes and Crematorium is conduct training programs and workshops for caregivers and those in the healthcare field. At first blush, there may seem to be a disconnect in a funeral home providing this sort of training. However, we have found that nearly all caregivers have not had sufficient training and lack the knowledge as to what happens after someone in their care passes away.
Recently, we provided a two hour workshop to over 60 nursing students on the funeral arrangment process. Most of these young (and not so young) students had no idea what the process was about. Yet, many newly licensed nurses will have their first job experience in nursing home and assisted living facilities. Clearly, this sort of training can only assist them in providing valuable information to their client families. Earlier this month, we conducted an evening workshop for hospice volunteers on funeral and cremation options. Again, these volunteers are on the front lines, speaking with families. Arming them with knowledge only helps them manage the process. Another group we recently provided training to was a local nursing home. Most of the workshop focused on the process of filing death certificates and legal issues around autopsies and the role of the medical examiners office. These are topics of importance to these professionals yet not something taught in nursing school or any other caregiver program.
We provide our training programs both on-site and off site and offer it free of charge. If you work for a nursing home, hospice program, hospital or other caregiver organization in New Hampshire and would like more information about one of free programs, please give me a call at 625-5778 or email me at buddy@phaneuf.net
A few weeks ago, Service Corporation International (SCI), the worlds largest consolidator of funeral homes, announced that it would be purchasing Keystone Group Holdings. Keystone, which ownes around 200 funeral homes in the US, has two locations in New Hampshire. Both locations are in Keene – Foley Funeral Home and Fletcher Funeral Home. In fact, these are the only two funeral homes in Keene. With these two firms, SCI will now operate McHugh Funeral Home in Manchester, Zis Sweeney and St. Laurent Funeral Homes in Nashua and Fleury-Patry Funeral Homes in Berlin and Gorham. With seven rooftops in the state, one would think SCI would be able to provide some real economies of scale in terms of pricing and offerings. Yet, SCI’s prices, both in NH and throughout New England and the rest of the United States are always among the highest it the communities in which it operates.
While I am all for competition, I feel the public should be made aware of which funeral homes are family owned and which are owned by publicly-traded firms who need to answer to their Board of Directors and stockholders, not the families they serve. A number of states require funeral homes to disclose their ownership on their signs and on advertisements. Call me naive, but if I see a sign or advertisement for the Jones Family funeral Home, I would expect someone named Jones to actually work there. If all this sound like bitter grapes, it’s not. In fact, to have SCI come into your community is one of the best things a competing funeral home could ask for. Generally, within a matter of months, they raise prices, change the staffing and pull back from community involvement. What more could we ask for.
A few weeks ago, Service Corporation International (SCI), the worlds largest consolidator of funeral homes, announced that it would be purchasing Keystone Group Holdings. Keystone, which ownes around 200 funeral homes in the US, has two locations in New Hampshire. Both locations are in Keene – Foley Funeral Home and Fletcher Funeral Home. In fact, these are the only two funeral homes in Keene. With these two firms, SCI will now operate McHugh Funeral Home in Manchester, Zis Sweeney and St. Laurent Funeral Homes in Nashua and Fleury-Patry Funeral Homes in Berlin and Gorham. With seven rooftops in the state, one would think SCI would be able to provide some real economies of scale in terms of pricing and offerings. Yet, SCI’s prices, both in NH and throughout New England and the rest of the United States are always among the highest it the communities in which it operates.
While I am all for competition, I feel the public should be made aware of which funeral homes are family owned and which are owned by publicly-traded firms who need to answer to their Board of Directors and stockholders, not the families they serve. A number of states require funeral homes to disclose their ownership on their signs and on advertisements. Call me naive, but if I see a sign or advertisement for the Jones Family funeral Home, I would expect someone named Jones to actually work there. If all this sound like bitter grapes, it’s not. In fact, to have SCI come into your community is one of the best things a competing funeral home could ask for. Generally, within a matter of months, they raise prices, change the staffing and pull back from community involvement. What more could we ask for.
Free, Unedited and Current Obituaries for All Deaths In New Hampshire
New Hampshire residents looking for current obituary informtion can go to www.NHobit.com. NHObit is a free site that lists current obituaries for all of New Hampshire. Powered by Tributes.com, the world’s largest aggregator of obituary content, visitors can read full and unedited obituaries from NH residents. You can also subscribe to the site or even visit the site’s Facebook page and get notified of current information. No longer do you have to wait for the obituary to appear in the paper or search though several funeral home websites.
We live in a world where people are accustom to instant access to information. Twenty-four hour TV news stations, Internet websites and blogs, facebook pages and twitter accounts allow us to stay connected to world events, regional happenings, local issues and personal goings on. So why then do we need to wait often days to learn about one of the most important events that impact our lives – the death of a family member, relative or friend? For decades, here is the way we learned about the death of someone we knew and the details of the funeral or service. A day or so after the person passed away, the family would meet with their local funeral director. During the meeting, the director would gather information about the deceased and incorporate the names of family members and the service details to develop an obituary. The obituary would then be hand delivered or faxed (and now emailed) to the local newspaper for publication the next day. Due to the time lag, the obituary would often appear in the paper the same day as the service, giving those that knew the individual little time to make plans to attend the event. And for their role in disseminating the obituary, the newspaper would edit, chop and reword the article, often looking nothing like what was sent in by the funeral home. The price to run this memorial is often not cheap (people are usually surprised to learn that newspapers charge the family to print obituary notices). In New Hampshire, obituary fees from the various daily papers range from $75 to well over $200 depending upon the length and if a picture is included. In larger metro areas such as Boston, New York and Washington, it’s not uncommon for the obituary to cost $500 to over $1,000.
Funeral homes throughout the country are now coming to realize the flaw of this notification system. Many funeral homes now post obituaries on their company websites. The information goes up shortly after the family meets with the funeral director. The family is able to include pictures of the deceased and more information about their lives without the concerns of it costing hundreds of dollars due to the length. There are often on-line guestbooks for mourners to sign, directions to the funeral home and church with the help of mapping software and links to memorial donation sites. While this is a much better and cost effective solution, it still is not without some flaws.
One of the main problems is that the family and friends may not know which funeral home is handling the service. In a community of five to ten or even more funeral homes, this might involve perusing the websites of numerous funeral homes. Search engines are getting better at finding funeral home website sites and listing the information. But there is even a better way to access this information. There are now websites that consolidate obituaries allowing consumers to search for listings locally and even nationally. You can even sign up on these sites to get notification of an obituary of people you may have worked with, gone to school with or served in the miliary with. And these sites are not just for the curious public. Several allows family members to create a full life tribute with pictures, slide-shows, videos, and music along with text.
There are two websites that you should visit. The first is Tributes (www.tributes.com) which not only has current listings of deceased (often with full obituaries) but has archived deaths since the early 1900s. Tributes also allows people the create everlasting tributes on their site as well. For a more local focus, NH Obit (www.nhobit.com) allows people to view all local and current New Hampshire obitiaries. As more and more funeral homes provide content to these sites, the public will have free, immediate and accurate obituary information at their fingertips. No more waiting for the newspaper to print the obituary three days or more after the death occured.
So with access to this timely and free information, what will be the fate of the local newspaper obituary. In my opinion, the printed obituary will not be with us ten years from now and possibly as soon as five. With many newspapers in bankruptcy and others cutting down the frequency of distribution, the printed obit will get more costly. Take a look at what is happening here in New Hampshire. On newspaper has decided to no longer print obituaries on Saturday outside a specific market area. In some other states, newspapers print obituaries only a few days a week. It’s just a matter of time before people will be mourning (or celebrating) another death – that of the newspaper obituary.
My friend asked me the other day, “why do you have a facebook page for your funeral home?” I asked him if he had a facebook page and he told me he did. All his friends and family members have a facebook page he told me. He said it’s how they all stayed connected to each other. And I told him that our funeral home has a facebook page for the same reason. We want to be able to stay in touch with our client famlies and friends to let them know what we are doing. While we have our community service events and happenings listed on our website, most people don’t go to the site unless they are looking for an obituary and directions. Our facebook site allows us to interact more casually and timely with the community. So become a fan of the Phaneuf Funeral Homes and Crematorium facebook page. The link is http://www.facebook.com/home.php?filter=fl_1064347322044#/pages/Manchester-NH/Phaneuf-Funeral-Homes-Crematorium/54760096350
What happens when an indigent person dies in New Hampshire? Who pays for their final disposition? For years, hundreds of years, local communities interred their indigent population in “pauper’s graves”. The grave sites were donated to the family either by the city or town or the church, depending upon who ran the cemetery. Local funeral directors provided the casket either free or for a nominal fee. Often these graves would go unmarked until the family could afford a headstone. Sometimes, the local welfare department gave the funeral home a small stipend (a few hundred dollars) to help defray their costs. Now days, with the average funeral costing over $6,000 and cemetery lots selling for well over $1,000 in some communities, indigents are no longer buried. Municipal and chuch cemeteries simply are no longer able to give away this expensive real estate and funeral homes are not able to donate thousands of dollars worth of services and merchandise and expect to stay in business.
In New Hampshire, most cities and towns now provide a “welfare benefit” of $750 to the funeral home for handling the final disposition of an indigent person. This money is not dolled out without a singificant screening process. The family of the deceased must fill out an application to prove that there are no financial means to pay for the funeral. The welfare department, in turn, must research the claim and ensure that all other financial options have been exhausted. This process can take from several hours to up to a week. And the process stops over the weekend often leaving families feeling unsure of the fate of their loved ones. It’s not that the city or towns are cruel, its simply the nature of the bureaucratic process.
As the economy continues to head south, more and more families are relying on welfare assistance at the time of loss. Last year alone, our firm handled over 75 indigent families and the number is expected to be over 100 this year. Statewide, we estimate over 400 families will be in need of welfare assistance when their loved one passes away. As isf this number is not alarming enough, there are a number of related issues to this crisis.
First, the Governor recently announced that budget cuts may results in eliminating State funds which were available in the past to assist indigent families. If this passes, then cities and towns, many of whom are struggling financially, will have to pick up the tab. Second, since the welfare payment is only $750, the option to bury indigents is no longer an option. Nearly all indigent residents are now cremated. For many, this is not a problem. But for some, cremation is either again their wishes or even their religion, in the case Muslims and Orthodox Jews. This poses a huge dilemma for the family and the funeral home. Finally, many smaller funeral homes simply cannot provide this service any longer. While $750 may seem like a tidy sum, the actual cost for most firms to transfer the deceased from the place of death to the funeral home, file the necessary paperwork, meet with the family, transfer the deceased to the crematory, pay the crematory fees and state fees, far exceeds what the funeral home receives from the welfare departments. And with more and more families needing assistance, this issue will continue to exist for the foreseeable future.
I don’t have an answer to the problem. Our firm has been able to continue to provide this community service but many firms cannot; not because they don’t want to but because they simply cannot afford to. While no one probably cares about the profitability woes of the funeral industry, the fact is with skyrocketing cremation rates and huge investments in buldings, inventory and staff, this is simply not the lucrative profession it once was.
Last week, the New Hampshire Legislature refused to pass a bill that would have overturned a ban on alkaline hydrolysis, otherwise knows as resomation. Last year, I blogged on this very topic and do not want to reiterite what I said in this current writing. The Associated Press covered the story which you can read in it’s entirety at http://www.seacoastonline.com/articles/20090304-NEWS-90304045.
The vote was close and many think the decision not to allows this new process was more emotional than factual. However, the fact is that New Hampshire would have been the first in the nation to allow resomation to be used commercially by the funeral industry. I love that our state is first in the nation for a number of things (first in the nation primary, first in the nation to have a state lottery) but to be the first resomation state without much more testing, analysis and discussion would not be beneficial. And given the fact that our state has had difficulty regulating the funeral and cremation industry due to lack of funding and archiac laws, the timing is just not right.
Perhaps some day resomation will be as popular as cremation
We often get questions about anatomical donations (aka donating your body to science). Generally, anatomical donations are coordinated through medical schools. Just because you want to donate your body does not mean it will happen. In New Hampshire, Dartmouth Medical School is the only approved facility for accepting body donations in the state. But the number of people wanting to donate far exceeds the demand. Medical schools simply do not need all of the anatomical donations that are available and often will not accept a donor’s body. Most schools also require the individual to pre-register and fill out necessary form well in advance. There are research companies that will also allow you to donate your body. One of the largest is ScienceCare (www.sciencecare.com). Donating your body is a very noble gesture and is one of the ways to help further medial research and assist in the training of future physicians. But if you are considering donating your body, make sure you have a back up plan for funeral or cremation arrangements in the likely case you are not able to be a donor.
People also assume there is no fee to donate your body to science. In fact, there is almost always a cost in doing so but many medical schools and anatomical research facilities will reimburse the family for part of all of the expenses. When you donate your body to science, there is no casket, embalming or funeral expenses in the traditional sense. But there are charges to move the body from the place of death, get your body to the medical school, file the death certificate, notify social security and assist the family with scheduling any memorial services. These fees can be a few hundred or even a few thousand dollars depending upon where the medical school is located and the type of assistance the family will need in coordinating the above mentioned items. The good news is that most of these fees will be offset by a reimbursement from the medical school or research institute. However, donating your body will, in most cases, involved the services of a funeral home in some limited way.
Body donation is also not the same as organ donation. Also before you donate your body, you should find out what happens with the remains after the institution is completed with them. In some cases, the remains are cremated and retured to the family. In other cases, nothing is returned. If this is a concern to you and your family, you should seek this out well in advance of your decision.
You are not limited to donating your body to an institution in the state in which you reside. For example, residents of New Hampshire can make arrangements for donations with any of the several medical schools in Massachusetts. But again, in most cases, the supply far exceeds the demand and most people that want to donate their body do not end up being able to do so.
Most people don’t realize that New Hampshire has one of the highest cremation rates in the country. With families choosing cremation well over 50% of the time, cremation is now the preferred choice for most Granite State families. Statewide, the rate is projected to exceed 65% within the next ten years. So why do so many New Hampshire residents choose cremation when our neighbors to the south in Massachusetts have a rate close to half of that? First, the Catholic Church in our State was one of the first diocese in the country to allow cremated remains to be brought into church. Second, in some states (such as Maine and Massachusetts) funeral homes cannot own crematories and as such, the funeral industry has been slower to embrace and promote cremation. While in our state, over 10% of funeral homes operate crematories. Also the low cost, simplicity and convenience of cremation appeals to a wide variety of people. And many ethnic and religious groups that have made New Hampshire their home have culturally accepted cremation in their native countries for generations. If you are considering cremation, I’d be interested to know why. If cremation is not something that you find acceptable, let us know that as well.
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