PHOTOS: Responding To Jewish And Muslim Communities’ Concerns, DOH Announces Evital Changes Ahead Of Rollout

After weeks of anxiety about unresolved issues that could have had potentially devastating ramifications, an eleventh hour meeting with the New York City Department of Health has left members of the Jewish and Muslim community cautiously optimistic that this weekend’s rollout of a new system to officially certify all births and deaths and to produce burial permits will proceed smoothly.

Assistant health commissioner Dr. Gretchen Van Wye met today with elected officials and funeral professionals to discuss outstanding issues about the eVital system which is expected to be up and running on Monday morning and will replace an older system that will be disabled Friday night by the DOH. Numerous concerns had been raised about the planned rollout, including eVital’s nearly two hour delay on burial permits, the relatively small percentage of physicians registered in the system who would be able to create death certificates, the DOH burial help desk’s history of poor response to calls, the release of a relatively untested system with no backup plan in place and expected lengthy wait times to obtain paper burial permits during the rollout that would create unacceptable delays in burials.

Dr. Van Wye addressed many of those concerns with the group which included City Councilmen Chaim Deutsch and Mark Levine, staffers from Mayor Bill de Blasio’s office and numerous representatives of the Metropolitan Funeral Directors Association of New York, Misaskim, Muslim Funeral Services, Hebrew Free Burial Association, Schwartz Brothers Funeral Home and Shomrei Hadas Funeral Chapels.

Misaskim director Yanky Meyer who has been outspoken about problems with the eVital rollout said that the meeting was extremely productive and that he was pleased with many of the changes that were implemented including an increase in the number of staffers in place during the rollout, having a rescue plan in place in case of system failure, the ability for funeral homes to bypass the mandatory two hour delay in producing burial permits and a large increase in doctor registration.

“Today was the first time we heard about these changes and we are really hoping that the transition this weekend will be flawless,” said Meyer. “We appreciate the fact that they really took the concerns of the Jewish and Muslim communities into consideration.”