Funeral Services And Mortuary Health Police Regulations

Funeral services and mortuary health police regulations

Introduction.

The regulations regarding what we call funeral services is abundant, on the one hand, due to the large number of activities that are included in this term, and, on the other hand, by the way in which the regulatory competences between the different grades are distributed between the different grades between the different gradesAdministrative: General State Administration, Autonomous Communities and Municipal Entities.

In this section, the regulations that currently regulate the most important activities of the funeral services market will be explained in the most synthetic way possible and how you are affecting the competition.

Developing.

It should be taken into account that the liberalization of the funeral services market is something relatively recent, since it does not occur until 1996. Until this year, the regulations that regulated the funeral services was Law 7/1985, which attributed to the municipalities the competences in terms of cemeteries and funeral services in the terms of the legislation of the State and of the Autonomous Communities.

Until this year, the funeral services were considered as essential services, and their activity was reserved for local entities provided by these services under monopoly conditions following the indications of the Mortuoria Health Police Regulations (RPSM) or the provisions adopted by theAutonomous communities in the field of their competences.

Through the Royal Decree- Law 7/1996, the funeral services market is liberalized allowing private companies to enter this market, under prior authorization by the municipal administrations, establishing certain regulations that we will see throughout this section. As of 2005, it is established that authorized funeral service providers can carry out their activity throughout the Spanish territory, always complying with the provisions of RPSM standards.

The law that regulates this market today is Law 17/2009. The requirements, restrictions and obligations that funeral companies must meet are collected in the regulations on mortuary health police. Although there is much more literature that regulate more specific activities such as the regulation that the complementary private transport companies must comply with, the agreements that must be met for the international transfer of corpses or the regulations on consumer protection.

The Mortuoria Health Police Regulation is the document that establishes all the norms applicable nationwide that funeral companies (public or private) must follow by carrying out all those activities that have to do with the conservation, manipulation and transfer of the bodies (includingthe norms to be followed in burials and exhumations of the bodies). In addition, it also establishes the general requirements of funeral companies, the characteristics of the coffins and vehicles that must be used, the conditions of the deposits, crematoriums, graves, niches ..

Funeral activity access barriers

In order to provide funeral services, companies require municipalities to authorize them previously. The regulations that regulate the granting of these authorizations impose various requirements that companies must previously meet. These requirements can be the requirement of a minimum number of media (coffin, vehicle, personal, offices …), accreditations of economic and financial solvency (such as Catalonia) or requirements related to the characteristics or locationof the tanatories. Fulfilling all these requirements requires a large initial investment, which hinders access to the market and, therefore, reduces competition.

In addition, the high bureaucracy and the time it involves it is a disincentive to the companies that wish to carry out this activity.

Barriers to the exercise of the activity of funeral companies and professionals

There are numerous rules that funeral companies must comply with and that contribute to creating barriers to the exercise of the activity. For example, there is a standard that prohibits the transfer of a body in the first 24 since the death, this rule helps to enhance market capture by the tanatories and funerals located near the place of death in prejudice to those of the place ofdestiny.

Another example is the rule that limits the transport of a body by a company that is located in the autonomous community of origin or destination. If someone requires a body transport service from Murcia to Barcelona. This law would force transportation to only make a company located in one of these two autonomous communities, but this service cannot also be developed efficiently by a Valencian company? This limitation is detrimental to competition and contributes to a market capture process.

Barriers related to qualification

Barriers related to qualification all those standards that impose degree and accreditation requirements to professionals who wish to perform funerary services. There are norms that reserve the right to carry out certain activities to graduates in Medicine and Surgery. These impose important entry barriers and distort the competition. 

Conclusions.

The RPSM must be renewed relatively due to changing situations that can occur over time due to the appearance of new contagious diseases, such as COVID-19. In practice, only the cities of Ceuta and Melilla are governed by these regulations, since the different autonomous communities, some more than others, have been regulating in the form of mortuary health police decrees on the RPSM in the field of their powers.

Catalonia is the only autonomous community that has brought its own regulation in the form of a law. Some municipalities have regulated the conditions that companies in this sector must meet to achieve authorization through municipal ordinances.

The numerous requirements, restrictions and obligations that the funeral companies established by the existing regulation impose obstacles that prevent competition can be developed correctly in the markets in the market.