Nine thousand dollars – that’s what Oklahomans can get from the Federal Emergency Management Agency for a COVID-19 funeral.As more and more people find out about the program, more are using it. But are people gaming the system?KOCO 5 Investigates asked the state Health Department, doctors, funeral home directors and the state Medical Examiner’s Office. KOCO 5 Investigates determined how many times, at a minimum, Oklahomans’ deaths were reclassified so a family member could get the FEMA help. Early in the pandemic, some Oklahomans were reluctant to admit their loved ones died from COVID-19. That’s not so much the case now that they can get help paying for the funeral from FEMA. Under normal circumstances, a person dies, the funeral home puts everything together for the family and a doctor signs the death certificate. But it’s not always so cut and dry. “Sometimes the funeral home, or normally, a physician, will reach out to us because the family member may have provided them medical records – additional information – so they can review it with the records they have as well,” said Carrie Wray-Sloan with the state Health Department’s Office of Vital Records. Wray-Sloan said the Health Department expected an increased number of changes to death certificates as a result of the FEMA benefit, which pays for expenses incurred after January 2020. But, so far they’ve had just 22 death certificates changed. The real number is likely higher. “That’s why that number seems fairly low to me. The only reason we knew that is because a physician and/or family member and/or funeral home … in those particular cases, they would say, well, you know, this is for FEMA,” she said. The Health Department doesn’t second-guess doctors. “We amend as directed by the physician, based on their best medical opinion. They don’t have to justify anything to us,” she said. We reached out to the state Medical Examiner’s Office, but no one responded to our calls or emails. Death certificate changes are common. The Health Department processes thousands of them a year, from small changes like misspelled names to large ones like causes of death.“We do quite a lot of amendments – there’s a large volume of amendments,” Wray-Sloan said. Oklahoma accounts for $16.8 million of the more than $1 billion FEMA has spent on the program nationwide. More than 4,200 applications have been filed, with 2.600 hundred approved.Lesa Foster lost her husband, hall-of-fame football coach Barry Foster, to COVID-19 earlier this year. “Barry and I were married 35 years, and he spent the majority of his coaching career at Rush Springs,” Foster said.The family all caught COVID-19. All got better but Barry. He ended up on a ventilator at Mercy Hospital. He died days later.“COVID had attacked his organs, and so his kidneys had failed, his liver shut down. And then his big loving heart was the last to stop,” Foster said.She is in the process of applying for the FEMA benefit. Her family was able to cover the funeral and burial, but many families can’t, and COVID-19 isn’t something you budget for.“I feel like, you know, they have the money allotted for families, and I just want to encourage other Oklahoma families who have been touched by COVID and have lots of family members to reach out to FEMA and apply, because the money is there for a specific purpose,” Foster said.She recommends families have the difficult end-of-life discussions before they’re forced to have them.“It’s not something that you think about – having those kinds of conversations – but I’m glad that we had some of those conversations,” Foster said. To qualify for the FEMA assistance, you must provide proof of what you spent on funeral and burial or cremation expenses for someone who died from COVID-19. Visit the As Seen On page for information on how to apply.