Post Mortem HTA Reportable Incidents (HTARIs)
Guidance for professionals in licenced mortuaries on reporting incidents. (HTARIs)
Professional
Qualifying relationships
For some purposes, including post mortem examinations, appropriate consent can be given by someone in a ‘qualifying relationship’ to the deceased immediately before their death. Please see further details in the Codes of Practice for each sector.
Those in a qualifying relationship to the deceased person are (highest first):
The more things change, the more they remain the same
Our Chief Executive Allan Marriott-Smith takes a look back over the last decade of the HTA.
I’m sure I’m not alone in the thinking that coming to the end of another decade has relatively few highlights. I can say for certain that in January 2020 I’m older, greyer and wrinklier than in 2010, and my knees have seen better days.
Organ donation: Lessons from Wales
On December 1 2015, Wales became the first country in the UK to implement a ‘soft opt-out’ system for organ donation. Earlier this year we learnt that this has significantly increased consent rates for deceased donation when compared with England. At the time of the law change consent rates in Wales were the lowest in the UK (less than 50%). Now they are the highest by some distance (77% compared with 67% for the rest of the UK).
Post mortem model consent forms
The HTA has produced a model consent form for professionals seeking consent for an adult or child's post mortem.
Sale of bodies, body parts and tissue policy
The HTA regulates organisations that remove, store and use human tissue for research, patient treatment, post-mortem examination, anatomical examination, surgical training and display in public. These activities require appropriate consent to be in place in order for them to lawfully take place, and a number of them are also licensable. Our code of practice on consent gives guidance on how to comply with the consent requirements of the Human Tissue Act 2004.
Relevant material under the Human Tissue Act 2004
The definition of relevant material in the Act is:
Section 53: Relevant material:
Guidance on the disposal of pregnancy remains following pregnancy loss or termination
Information on how to dispose of pregnancy remains following a pregnancy loss or termination.
Brain and spinal cord donation for hospital and mortuary staff
Many people, with the agreement of their relatives, want to support research into dementia and other brain diseases by donating their brain to a brain bank for research.
Brain banks encourage potential donors to provide written consent while they are alive so that brain donation can proceed smoothly after they have died. Donated brains can only be retrieved on premises licensed by the Human Tissue Authority (HTA) for removal and storage of tissues for use for research (see 1 below). Most of these premises are mortuaries in NHS hospitals.