Minnesota’s “Transfer Care Specialist” category is now effective

July 5, 2024/Business/

In an effort to help alleviate some of the worker shortages in the funeral home profession the State of Minnesota Legislature passed what is known as the “Transfer Care Specialist” category for funeral homes this past session. That category of workers became effective on July 1 and is now in effect.

In short, what that legislation does is allow a “Transfer Care Specialist” to legally make death call removals from the place of death “under the supervision of a licensed mortician”. Prior to this law a licensed mortician was required to make the removals.

And, “under the supervision of a licensed mortician” means that the supervising mortician only needs to be available to be contacted via phone and does not have to be accompanying the Transfer Care Specialist.

Other provisions of the law include that a licensed funeral director may supervise up to four Transfer Care Specialists and Transfer Care Specialist must complete 7 hours of training prior to being licenses for that position.

Bridging the Employee Gap — It’s our opinion at Funeral Director Daily that this type of legislative action is a positive way to help with what has been a lack of licensed employees in the Death Care field. If funeral homes can find the right type of people to become Transfer Care Specialists it will do a lot to stop some of the burn-out of continuously being “on call” for many rural funeral home licensed funeral directors.

Off hand, I think of a perfect type of Transfer Care Specialist may be someone who at one time worked in the Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) field and may now be retired.

In Minnesota I think that this legislation is a step forward. However, every funeral home owner and/or manager will have to decide how they will go about making this law work for them. For many it might depend on if they believe that their firm’s professionalism can continue to be at a very high standard while not using licensed morticians for this duty.

Tom Anderson
Funeral Director Daily

Finding employees will continue to be an issue in funeral service — Every thing we, as a profession, can do to influence young people, and 2nd career people to look at Death Care as a profession is helpful. I think we are now to the point that we know that bridging the employment gap is, and will be, a continuous effort on the part of the greater Death Care community.

We continue to see good results from our efforts as enrollments have been up in mortuary schools across the country and efforts like this one in Minnesota to make some funeral home positions easier to obtain employees. Even as some states, such as Colorado, are ramping up their requirements for certain work in the profession others are finding ways to make initial entrance into the profession a little easier. Death care needs to continue to make good decisions on how we can make our profession more attractive to many.

It’s not just funeral service — As I was researching this article I came across this article from Yahoo about Healthcare and how workers are continuously in demand in that field as well. There is a little difference between Healthcare and Death Care, however, in perspective. Healthcare in the United States represents 17.3% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the U.S. — that number equates to about $4.5 trillion being spent on Healthcare in the United States in 2022.

Some people estimate that dollars spent on Death Care is about $23 billion annually. That would mean that about 1/2 cent would be spent on Death Care for every $1 spent on Health Care.

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