Section 440.165 - Statement of the cause of death1. The statement of the cause of death in a medical certificate of death is the certifier's best medical opinion and must be:(a) Written legibly, when completed on a paper certificate; and(b) Expressed clearly and concisely.2. The State Registrar or local registrar shall return a medical certificate of death to the certifier to be corrected or made more definite if the statement: (a) Consists of only the term "natural causes";(b) Consists solely of mechanisms of death which merely attest to the fact of death or contains any other indefinite or obsolete term which denotes only the symptom of a disease or the conditions resulting from a disease;(c) Is illogically or confusingly written; or(d) Contains abbreviations, misspellings or is written in shorthand or in all capital letters.3. Part I of the statement of the cause of death in the standard certificate of death approved by the United States Public Health Service may contain only the sequence of disease or the injury or other trauma directly resulting in death, as follows: (a) Line "a. IMMEDIATE CAUSE (Final disease or condition resulting in death)" must show the immediate (primary) cause of death;(b) Line "b. Due to (or as a consequence of)" must show the factors that caused or contributed to the immediate cause of death listed in line a;(c) Line "c. Due to (or as a consequence of)" must show the factors that resulted in or contributed to the factors listed in line b;(d) Line "d. Due to (or as a consequence of)" must show the factors that resulted in or contributed to the factors listed in line c;(e) If the contributing cause of death is unknown for line b, c or d, the certifier of medical information must enter "unknown etiology"; and(f) If the cause of death is a drug overdose, the certifier of medical information must list the exact components of the drug mixture that caused the overdose. The underlying cause of death must be the last cause listed. If there are no contributing causes, the underlying cause must be entered on line b. If the immediate cause and the underlying cause are synonymous, only one entry is necessary. It is permissible for a certifier to qualify a cause of death as "probable" or "presumed," even if the cause has not been definitively diagnosed.
4. Part II of the statement of the cause of death must show the diseases, injuries or other factors which are medically or statistically significant but not directly related to the cause of death.5. The statement of the cause of death must be submitted electronically by the certifier to an electronic death registry system approved by the Division of Public and Behavioral Health of the Department of Health and Human Services and attested to by the certifier by means of an electronic signature.6. As used in this section, "electronic signature" means an electronic sound, symbol or process attached to or logically associated with a document and executed or adopted by a person with the intent to sign the document.Nev. Admin. Code § 440.165
Added to NAC by Bd. of Health, eff. 12-3-84; A by R126-12, 2-20-2013; A by R066-16A, eff. 11/2/2016; A by R111-22A, eff. 7/26/2023NRS 440.120, 440.380, 440.410