The City of New York Office of Chief Medical Examiner
Reportable ME Deaths (OCME New York City 212-447-2030)
- All forms of criminal violence or from an unlawful act or criminal neglect
- All accidents (motor vehicle, falls, industrial)
- All suicides
- All deaths caused or contributed to by drug/chemical overdose or poisoning
- Sudden death of a person in apparent good health
- Death unattended by a physician
- Deaths of all persons in legal/court ordered detention
- Deaths during or due to complications of diagnostic or therapeutic procedures
- Deaths related to employment
- Deaths which occur in any suspicious or unusual manner
- Fetus born dead due to maternal trauma or drug abuse or in the absence of a physician/midwife
Any death that is not due to 100% natural disease must be reported to the OCME, even if that injury takes years to result in the fatality.
There is no 24 hour rule in NYC; Natural deaths in patients who survived less than 24 hours in the hospital need not be reported to the OCME.
Source: www.nyc.gov/ocme