Scalding state review blasts Texas funeral agency’s lax oversight of body donation program

The Texas Funeral Service Commission’s oversight of the state’s body-donation program is so lax it is jeopardizing the agency’s future, according to scathing “limited scope” review by the Texas Sunset Advisory Commission.

“During this review, Sunset staff identified several core regulatory shortcomings at TFSC that raise serious concerns about the long-term stability and effective operation of the agency,” the Sunset report began.

For the past year, the commission — which regulates the state’s 1,200 funeral homes and embalming facilities — has been rocked by allegations of mismanagement, specifically in its supervision of the Human Anatomical Donation Program, which transfers human remains to research facilities and medical schools.

More than a year ago, NBC News reported that the lack of state supervision allowed one research facility to profit from donated bodies by slicing them up and selling parts to other groups. The funeral commission conducted its own review and issued a moratorium on out-of-state shipments.

The Texas Legislature responded by ordering the review focusing on problems within the body donation program. The commission will still undergo a more comprehensive review in 2029.

The Sunset process offers a once-a-decade look at an agency’s performance ahead of an upcoming legislative session. Its recommendations are often used by lawmakers when crafting bills to streamline an agency’s workload and increase efficiency.

Litany of problems

The Human Anatomical Donation Program was transferred to the funeral commission three years ago. Ever since, the Sunset commission report stated, the agency “has been rife with turmoil.”

In this one-time review of the body donation program, reviewers found the funeral commission had failed to set proper rules and administer them in a timely manner, leaving it vulnerable to legal liability. The agency will need “significant” statutory and organizational changes if it is to continue overseeing the program, the review said.

Other persistent problems included the agency’s failure to effectively communicate its own rules, resulting in confusion about agency processes, a problem that persists today.

“The agency has also struggled to perform other basic tasks a functional state agency should be able to accomplish,” the Sunset review team found.

The commission struggled when it came to the most basic workflow tasks, like transitioning the agency away from Google Workspace to Microsoft Office, which most Texas agencies use. Although the agency was required to pick a state-approved contractor, it opted to go another route that took the agency’s transition longer to complete, the review found.

For more than a year, the funeral commission has de-prioritized the anatomical donation program to focus more on its traditional role regulating funeral homes.

Still, the agency has suffered from high rates of employee turnover resulting in a backlog of funeral-related enforcement cases, the review found. In fiscal year 2025, the funeral commission resolved 197 complaints related to funeral services activities but took an average of more than 370 days to resolve a complaint — ending the year with 603 complaints still pending.

Also in 2025, the funeral commission received 12 complaints relating to the anatomical program and resolved one.

As noted by the Sunset review: “Resolving complaints in a timely manner is not a new problem for TFSC.”