Manage a Death From Mortuary Bay to Release

When a death occurs, Veona handles the dignified, careful path from recording it through to releasing the body to the family. The deceased is recorded, assigned a mortuary bay, and held there until a checklist of requirements is satisfied — the certificate signed, the registry acknowledged, the bill settled, the next of kin and identification confirmed. Crucially, the gates that protect this are derived: Veona works them out from the real state of the record, so no one can simply tick a box to let a body go before it should.

Who / when: the mortuary attendant, from the moment a death is recorded through to the release of the body. (Recording the cause of death and issuing the certificate involve the vital registrar and certifying clinician.) We’ll follow Attendant Musa receiving a deceased into the mortuary.

1. Mortuary attendant — open Vital Records → New Record (“New death record”). The form opens on three steps.
2. Mortuary attendant — on step “1 · Deceased”, choose the source: “Registered patient” (pick from the patient picker by UHID — Unique Health ID, the permanent hospital number — or name), “External” (someone who died outside but is brought in), or “Unidentified” (enter a name where one is required).
3. Mortuary attendant — on step “2 · Death event”, set the place of death, the certifying clinician, and the manner of death.
4. Mortuary attendant — on step “3 · Cause of death (ICD-11)”, search the ICD-11 catalogue (the World Health Organization’s standard list of causes of death) for the underlying cause, then save the record.
5. Mortuary attendant — open Vital Records → Mortuary Bays. On an “Available” bay, select “Assign”, enter the record reference and the deceased’s name, and select “Assign bay”. The bay flips to Occupied.
6. Mortuary attendant — manage the bay’s state over time with “Mark ready”, “Return to service”, or “Out of service” as needed.

Caution

The release checklist is derived and read-only — you cannot tick a gate by hand to force a release. Veona computes each gate from the record itself: whether the certificate is signed, whether the registry (civil registration) has acknowledged it, and whether the invoice (mortuary balance) is settled, plus attestations that the next of kin and identification are confirmed. If you try to set a derived gate manually, Veona refuses it. The body cannot be released while the registry acknowledgement or the eSignature are still outstanding.

Note

Because the gates are server-authoritative, the screen’s checklist is advisory — it shows you where things stand, but the real decision is enforced behind the scenes. That is deliberate: it makes it impossible to release a body early by clicking around the interface.

What happens next

With the deceased recorded and settled into a bay, the next step is for the registrar and certifying physician to Issue a Death Certificate — a signed act, gated by an eSign PIN, which clears the signed gate and (once the registry acknowledges) opens the way to release the body. Separately, registered deaths feed the population statistics your facility reports; see Export Vital Events to DHIS2. Only when every derived gate is genuinely met is the body released to the family.

Follow the trail

• Next: Issue a Death Certificate
• Related: Issue a Death Certificate · Export Vital Events to DHIS2