Office of the State Registrar

Death Registration Information for Funeral Directors and Staff

It is the responsibility of the State Registrar to maintain a statewide system of vital statistics including the registration of all births and deaths that occur in Minnesota according to Minnesota Statute, sections 144.211 thru 144.227.

This website is dedicated to providing information to funeral directors and other funeral home staff about the death registration process in Minnesota.

Death Registration in Minnesota
Development of Electronic Death Registration (EDRS) in Minnesota
Summary of Current MN VRV2000 Users

Death Registration in Minnesota
Records for all deaths that occur in Minnesota are filed electronically by entering data in Minnesota's integrated electronic system (MN VRV2000). Use of MN VRV2000 by funeral directors, physicians, medical examiners, and coroners is OPTIONAL.

If a funeral home does not use MN VRV2000, the funeral director takes the completed worksheet to a local registrar who enters the data into MN VRV2000. If the funeral home uses MN VRV2000 but the physician providing the cause of death does not, the funeral home enters the fact of death and Office of the State Registrar staff at the Minnesota Department of Health enter the cause of death information.

Development of Electronic Death Registration (EDRS) in Minnesota
Initial development of EDRS in Minnesota was an intrinsic part of the Vital Statistics Redesign Project, a five-year project from July 1997 through June 2002 to develop an integrated electronic system (MN VRV2000) for the collection, processing, and reporting of birth and death information.

Key goals of MN VRV2000 are to:

· improve data quality and timeliness;
· improve customer service;
· improve fraud prevention; and
· improve data processing efficiency.

MN VRV2000 includes a client server based application used by hospitals and registrars and a web based application used by funeral directors, physicians, medical examiners, and coroners. As a component of MN VRV2000, the EDRS web application is currently available statewide to all users.