Birth, death certificates affected by Florida health system outage

Floridians may have to wait longer to get birth and death certificates as the state Department of Health deals with server issues.

State tax collectors’ offices and funeral homes say they haven’t been able to access the online system needed to issue certificates since last week.

They say the issue has created added stress for family members needing to bury or cremate loved ones and for residents trying to get official documents to complete applications and forms.

The Department of Health did not return calls and texts Tuesday about why the system is offline.

Last week, a state employee sent an email to users of the state’s electronic birth and death registration systems alerting them of “storage migration” work Thursday from 6 p.m. to midnight, during which the system wouldn’t be accessible.

But on Friday, people were still having trouble accessing the system. At around 8 p.m. on Friday, the state sent an email to the death registration system users saying the online system was unavailable and directing them to paper forms to “assist with continuing services offline.”

Cecelia Lawson, a licensed funeral director with Lawson Funeral Home in St. Petersburg, said the online system being down has been an added stress for the business and its clients.

Lawson mentioned a Muslim family that came in Tuesday needing a death certificate signed the same day so they could complete the burial in line with their religious customs.

“This is 2024,” Lawson said. “This is a system that should not be down for no more than just for maintenance. It shouldn’t have been down since Friday of last week.”

Lawson said the situation is more worrisome because state employees have Thursday and Friday off for the Fourth of July holiday.

William Miller, one of the owners at Mohn Funeral Home and Cremation Services in Seminole, said he remembers regularly using paper death certificates about 15 years ago. He said it seems “tougher than it used to be” and requires a lot of copies in a lot of different places, but he said it’s still possible to get it done.

Miller said he’s asked but hasn’t gotten more details about the problems with the online system beyond assurances that the state is working on it.

Both the Pinellas and Pasco tax collectors said they have been unable to provide birth certificates while the system has been down. Mike Fasano, the Pasco tax collector, said he’s heard the health department doesn’t expect the system to come back up any time this week.

It has already caused issues for some constituents, including one who came in and needed a birth certificate for an upcoming cruise, Fasano said.