Moscow City Hall was dissatisfied with funeral services

Moscow morgues and hospitals provide low-quality funeral services, this is a reason to reconsider the procedure for providing them. Capital officials came to this conclusion after a large-scale inspection, the results of which were reviewed by Kommersant. This may further complicate the situation of specialized urban services providing funeral services, whose lease agreements have not been renewed en masse since the beginning of the year.

Photo: Yuri Martyanov, Kommersant / buy photo

The Department of Trade and Services of the Moscow Government conducted an audit of the capital's hospitals and morgues regarding the provision of funeral services. Kommersant got acquainted with the results of this check. In total, officials checked 41 objects. The appearance of the premises used in hospitals for the provision of funeral services did not satisfy the department, its head Alexey Nemeryuk noted in a conversation with Kommersant. Among the violations identified are the placement of tables of tenant companies outside the rented area, coffins and wreaths are displayed in mourning halls or directly on the first floors of pathology departments. “In some cases, the leased area under the contract turned out to be several times smaller than the occupied area,” lists Mr. Nemeryuk. The materials contain copies of price lists indicating the cost of storing a body in a morgue, which is a free service, a coupon for transporting a body from one morgue to another without doctors’ permission, and a number of other shortcomings.

According to Mr. Nemeryuk, improper organization of funeral services is a reason to review the procedure for their provision in hospitals. The tenants of the premises used for the sale of funeral services are city specialized services (SSS; they are required to provide services to certain categories of citizens according to a guaranteed list, that is, 16.2 thousand rubles per funeral; they have been privatized over the past three years). At the beginning of the year, they complained to the mayor's office that their expiring lease agreements were not being renewed (see Kommersant, January 27). Then the president of the Union of Organizations of Ritual and Funeral Services in Moscow, Andrei Stoskov, said that the GSS was being forced out of morgues in order to give these areas to the State Budgetary Institution "Ritual" (the successor to the reformed State Unitary Enterprise of the same name). “Ritual” needs to increase its revenue - during the reform, the institution lost up to 50% of its revenue (about 1 billion rubles), which was provided by the registration of family and ancestral burials. Now this segment will be handled by the Department of Trade and Services.

Alexey Nemeryuk says that his department is still studying the possibility of placing representatives of the State Budgetary Institution “Ritual” in hospitals. According to him, of the morgues and hospitals inspected, “Ritual” was found in only one place. The official clarified that the presence of any funeral services in hospitals in the form in which they operate now looks unethical.

According to Kommersant's sources in the industry, in some hospitals the space that was previously occupied by the State Social Insurance Fund has now gone to companies affiliated with funeral agents (they buy data on deaths from the police and hospitals, offering services to relatives). Thus, according to one of Kommersant’s interlocutors, in the city hospital No. 23, where Ritus-Service worked until recently, LLC City Enterprise Ritual is located without a lease agreement. According to the SPARK-Interfax database, among the owners of this LLC, Alexey Klenov is a prominent player in the funeral market. The deputy chief physician of hospital N23, Veniamin Romanovsky, claims that there is no new tenant for the morgue, since the pathology building is under renovation. According to the Department of Trade and Services, at the time of the inspection, Ritual LLC was operating in hospital N51 without registration (one of the owners of this company owns a share in the related State Enterprise Ritual - a structure headed by Alexey Troshenkov, Alexey Klenov’s partner in the State Enterprise Ritual. ). Hospital N51 told Kommersant that there are no rental relations there and funeral services are not provided.

General Director of Stix-S Vladimir Panin says that due to the lack of tenants, hospitals are losing not only rental income, but also donations to charity, payment for repairs, and subsidies for equipment. According to his estimates, over the past three years, six State Health Insurance Funds have transferred 249 million rubles to hospitals. for the listed needs.

Ekaterina Gerashchenko

The morgue is inappropriate here