Twiggs Coroner sounds alarm over rising number of indigent deaths

Many people who are dying in Twiggs County have unreachable family members, or the family is unable to afford burial or cremation costs, the coroner told the county board of commissioners during their last meeting.

“We’ve had about 15 already this year,” county coroner Harold L. Reece said. “It’s not my job as coroner to be the pauper police. But I took it upon myself to do just that. I hold these bodies for a week. Probably out of the 15, seven I have located some family or the nursing home has had funds.”

According to Georgia law, when a person dies and their family is “indigent,” meaning they are unable to pay for their descendant’s burial or cremation, the county in which the death occurred is responsible for paying for “decent” burial or cremation from county funds.  

In the case of last week’s board meeting, Reece came forward to request funds for a man named Cary Harris, who lived in the county’s sole nursing home, Advanced Health and Rehab of Twiggs County. Commissioners voted unanimously to approve $750 for Harris’s cremation. 

“I’ve had to go to other counties’ coroners — who are friends of mine — that kept bodies for me,” Reece said. “It’s just getting worse. It’s not getting any better.”

One who has been helping Twiggs is Bibb County Coroner Leon Jones. While Bibb has more resources to support indigent deaths, Jones said that he’s noticed this problem getting worse in his jurisdiction as well. 

“We have people that die in Bibb County all the time, and the family won’t be responsible for the body,” Jones said. “A lot of times, the people who die are the resident of a nursing home, and they don’t have any money in their account at the nursing home, so the county has to pay.”

Reece says that the primary source of indigent deaths in Twiggs are nursing home residents, most of whom aren’t from Jeffersonville. Harris, for example, was from Louisiana.

“He may have several brothers and sisters in Louisiana,” he said. “Who knows? There’s no way to check.”

The Times Journal Post spoke with a receptionist at that nursing home, Advanced Health and Rehab of Twiggs County, but has not heard back at the time of publication.

Bibb County uses a program called LexisNexis to search for the family members of the indigent deceased, which has capabilities to pull information from public records across the country. The product can cost thousands of dollars per year for governments.

This isn’t an uncommon problem counties across the country are facing. Some areas’ indigent deaths are mostly due to drug overdoses, others may be due to homelessness or, in the case of Twiggs, natural causes in nursing homes. The National Association of Counties says that how counties choose to handle these deaths varies. A county in Tennessee donates bodies to science or cremates them. A Virginia county utilizes casket burials, which can cost up to $4,000. In Washington, a county holds a mass burial ceremony every two years.

Twiggs does not have a defined process for what to do with the indigent cremated remains, Reece said. Georgia law leaves that up to the counties themselves. For now, they’re stored in Reece Funeral Home, which he owns and operates. 

“Nobody has told me what to do with them, so I just keep them here,” he said.

As with any complex issue, there are a number of factors that could alleviate the burden on Georgia counties when it comes to indigent death.

Reece told commissioners that the nursing home tries to find family members, but they also don’t have much luck.

“There is no solution unless the state changes the law,” Reece said. 

Jones, who was an EMT for 32 years and has been in his “share of nursing homes,” believes that the solution lies with the nursing homes and that they need to be more diligent in collecting information about the patient’s next of kin. 

“The administrator of that nursing home needs to meet with every family member that has a loved one in that nursing home and decide who they want to use (for burial or cremation) right then,” Jones said. “Have it in writing, and make sure everyone’s on the same page.”