Complete Story
01/14/2010
Reprint of Article regarding Using CutePDF to create PDF files of Death Certificates
By: Bryan Chandler
It was Monday morning and we had completed all the proper steps called to verify the Physician would sign the Death Certificate for us, asked when they would be in the office and if we could come by to get it signed. Then we drive the 30 minutes and show up at the Office only to wait another hour to find out the Physician won't be able to sign it for us today. Every Funeral Director and anyone else that has ever worked for a Funeral Home and "Run D.C.'s" (Death Certificates) has had this happen. This was the issue that the EDRS (Electronic Death Registry System) was going to fix for us Funeral Directors. Right?
Well it may someday soon. If you are unaware many hospitals are starting to come online with the system. But for now, the Ohio Department o f Health is trying to work with Funeral Directors to assist us until the time all hospitals and physicians are online. They ODH has now approved the sending of D.C.'s to physicians via email as a PDF (Portable Document Format) file. Want to know how? Read On. To begin you will need a program they call a PDF writer, which simply means instead of printing the file to a printer it will save the file in a folder to PDF format. There are numerous programs that will do this for free and I don't really endorse any certain one but the one I use and know will work with the EDRS System is CutePDF Writer.
Once you click on the download link it will ask you to save or Run. I usually click save as I like to scan all software I download with antivirus before opening but it seems to be a pretty reputable company. Once you have downloaded it and clicked on it to install then it may ask you to download a converter program and click YES. The program will insert itself as a printer under your printer and faxes in the control panel. Now we are ready to print to PDF.
Log in to the EDRS program and click on the preferences tab. It is the white box icon with a blue check mark in it.
Click on the icon and another box will appear that will let you select "Print Type and Set Printer". Scroll down until you see the "Death Certificate Paper" then click on it. Next click on the down arrow under the "Printer Common Name or From Type of Tracking" heading, scroll down until you see the "CutePDF Writer" and click on it. Finally hit the save button and you are ready to print. Now go into any death certificate and print under Requests as you usually would. When you click on print a box will appear to allow you to save the death certificate as a file. (HINT: I made a separate folder under My Documents that is strictly for Death Certificates to keep myself organized.) Now you're done. Now we are ready to attach the file into an email using whatever program your company prefers. A couple suggestions though; make sure you state in the email that the D.C. has to be mailed back in a large manila envelope without any folds, (experience talking there). Also when you want to print the D.C. with your printer you may need to go back into the preferences tab and reselect your default printer instead of the Cute PDF Writer.
If you would like to watch a video of the process I described above, please visit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5g16YVPH46s (best viewed in HD)
If you have any questions please feel free to forward them on to me at (740) 732-1311 or Bryan@ChandlerFuneralHome.net
