Is the Death Location where the person last resided - as on the SSDI, or the facility where death was noted?

Question

I have several folk who actually died in a nursing home or hospital, yet the death record or sometimes even the death certificate uses the last residence as the place of death. Obituaries usually seem to do the same and so does the SSDI. So if we know a person died in a facility, should that be the one we record?

And part 2 of the same quandary - what is the best way to list the facility? I use Legacy, and there is no precise place on my program to put the facility name (perhaps as a side note, after recording the address).

How do others handle this?

Comments

Personally, I do not consider "last residence" and "death location" to mean the same. If I use the last residence from the SSDI or an obituary, I mark it as uncertain unless I have verified the location from the death certificate. I would consider the death certificate the primary and authoritative source for death information.

Of course, the death certificate can be incorrect at times. But unless I had personal knowledge of its data error or its data was unviable (saw one dc with dates of birth and death reversed, for example).

Answering your question in paragraph 1 of your post, I would say, "Yes. The location of the facility in which the person died would be the death location that should be recorded in the death location field."

Answering your question in paragraph 2, I would reference the actual facility itself in the Biography.

...my 2 Bennies...

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Thank you - that answers my question quite nicely.

Answer 1

Death certificates and will probates show the place of death as where the person died, not where they were living before death. I’d use this place.

Answer 2

I would suggest that the location of death is usually the place where they died, as in Town or City (or Country). Which is not always the place that they usually lived.

You can be more specific, if you put a comment in the Biography section, detailing more thorough information, such as, Nursing home, or Hospital, with address, cause of death, and anything else you can think of that is relevant.

Comments

The easiest answer to this, for recent deaths, is use the place of death on the death certificate  (ie. city, county, state,  country).  If you have more details,  as Dave suggested, include the information and source in the biography.   We have discussed before the fact that the death certificate doesn't show the actual place of death, but it is the legal record of the death.   Currently when a person dies at home, or in an accident,  they are taken to a hospital where they are pronounced dead by a physician and that becomes the place of death.   I think this was what was agreed upon, someone correct me if I am wrong.