The Law Already Names Who Decides. Your Job Is to Find Them.
Nobody is waiting on you to save a life: emergency care goes ahead without consent, and the hospital is obliged to treat first. What a surrogate is needed for is the decision that can wait long enough to require one. When a patient cannot consent and left no directive, many states put a named order of relatives into statute, and that order is the most useful thing on this page, because it converts a panicked hunt for anyone into a defined search with a first name and a finish line.
The Short Version
Emergency treatment does not wait for a surrogate, so start by asking the treating team what is actually blocked. Then look for a document before you look for a person: an advance directive or health care power of attorney names an agent and outranks the default family order, and a reader who turns one up is finished. If there is no directive, ask the hospital which state’s surrogate statute governs and which class it has reached — the social work team does this daily, and under federal privacy rules the hospital may use its own records to help identify or locate family. That answer tells you exactly who to search for. Only then does records work start, and it is one narrow job: turning a name and a relationship into a current phone number, fast.
Watch: Why the Order Decides Your Search
A short walk-through of the statutory surrogate list and how it turns into a search you can actually finish.
Play the overview
Nothing Is Frozen While You Look
The fear that sends people to a page like this is that a signature is the only thing standing between a patient and treatment. In an emergency it is not.
Take the worst of it off the table first. A hospital with an emergency department that a patient reaches, where a request for examination or treatment is made on that patient’s behalf, owes an appropriate medical screening examination within the capability of that department under 42 U.S.C. § 1395dd; and where an emergency medical condition is found, the hospital must provide, within the staff and facilities available to it, such further examination and treatment as may be required to stabilize the condition, or else an appropriate transfer. Read the statute for what it does not say. Not one clause of it turns on whether a relative has been reached.
That is the federal floor for an emergency department, and it sits alongside a doctrine every clinician works under: where a decision must be made now, the patient cannot participate, and no authorized decision-maker can be reached, treatment necessary to preserve life goes ahead. The precise contours of that doctrine are set by state law and by hospital policy, so we are not going to state a national rule for it — ask the treating team, who will tell you in one sentence.
So what is the surrogate actually needed for? The decisions with enough time in them to require a consent. A scheduled operation rather than a bleeding one. A choice between two treatment paths. A transfer, a discharge destination, an experimental protocol, a procedure the patient could reasonably have declined. And, at the far end, decisions about withholding or withdrawing life-sustaining treatment, which is where the statutes are at their most careful. Illinois splits exactly along that seam: under 755 ILCS 40/25, ordinary treatment decisions for a patient without a qualifying condition run one way, while decisions to forgo life-sustaining treatment for a patient who has one run another and carry extra conditions.
Ask the treating team a plain question, then, before anything else: what specifically is waiting on a decision-maker, and how long can it wait? The answer is sometimes “nothing today” and sometimes “the operating room tomorrow morning”. Those are two different searches, and only one of them justifies waking your cousins.
Search for a Piece of Paper Before You Search for a Person
If the patient appointed someone, the family order never comes into play at all, and the search you are running is the wrong one.
The default lists in state law are a fallback. They exist for people who never got around to it. Illinois says so in the structure of its own statute: the provider must first make a reasonable inquiry as to the availability and authority of a health care agent, and the surrogate list applies only “when no health care agent is authorized and available.” An agent named in a valid health care power of attorney outranks the entire family order, whoever else exists and however senior they are. Somebody’s spouse, adult son and three siblings can all be standing in the corridor and the appointed agent still decides.
This is why a reader who finds a directive has finished. Not “made progress” — finished. The remaining task is to reach the named agent, which is a much smaller problem than working an unknown family tree, because the document usually carries a phone number, an address and often an alternate.
Where these documents actually live
In rough order of how often they turn up: the patient’s own papers — a wallet card, a folder with the will, a bedside drawer, and, more often than you would think, taped inside a kitchen cupboard or on the refrigerator, which is where several state emergency-services programs tell people to put them. The primary care practice, which may have scanned it into the chart. Any hospital where the patient has been admitted before, for the same reason — and hospitals routinely ask for one at admission. A nursing home or assisted living facility, where the document is usually in the resident file. The attorney who drafted the will, since health care documents are commonly signed in the same appointment as the estate paperwork. And in some states, a registry.
State registries, and their real access rules
Registries are voluntary and only some states run one, so treat this as a check worth two minutes rather than a plan. Read the access rule before you get your hopes up, because it usually is not written for you. California’s Secretary of State maintains an Advance Health Care Directive Registry under Probate Code § 4800, and the office states that registered information is made available on request “to the registrant’s health care provider, public guardian, or legal representative”, with the request required to state the need for it. Notice who is on that list and who is not. A worried daughter is not on it; the hospital is. The fast move in California is to tell the treating team that a registration may exist and let the provider make the request.
North Carolina runs a different design. Its Secretary of State’s Advance Health Care Directive Registry issues the registrant a card, and lookup of the filed document works from the file number and the registrant’s password printed on it; the office states that since February 17, 2022 every card issued also carries a QR code that opens the document when scanned. In North Carolina, then, the card in the patient’s wallet is itself the key, which makes the property bag at the nurses’ station worth asking about before you drive to anyone’s house. Two states, two registries, two completely different answers to “can I see it” — which is the pattern for everything on this page.
One related search comes up so often it deserves naming. Where a relative is already claiming authority and nobody has seen the paperwork, the question is not where the patient’s directive is but who holds it and what it actually says, and our guide to establishing who holds power of attorney for a relative works through that separately.
One Word Carries the Whole Search: Available
The statutes do not tell a hospital to find the closest relative. They tell it to find the highest-ranked one who is available — and “available” is a defined term.
This is the mechanism nobody explains, and it is the reason a search has a shape at all. New York’s Family Health Care Decisions Act gives authority to one person “from the class highest in priority when persons in prior classes are not reasonably available, willing, and competent to act.” Florida’s proxy statute uses the same hinge: the classes apply in order “if no individual in a prior class is reasonably available, willing, or competent to act.” Illinois goes further than either and defines the word outright. Under 755 ILCS 40/10, a person is unavailable if — and this is the statutory text — “(i) the person’s existence is not known, (ii) the person has not been able to be contacted by telephone or mail, or (iii) the person lacks decisional capacity, refuses to accept the office of surrogate, or is unwilling to respond in a manner that indicates a choice among the treatment matters at issue.”
Read clause (ii) again slowly. Not-yet-reached is a legal status, not merely an inconvenience. An adult son who exists, is competent, and would say yes in a heartbeat is nonetheless unavailable under that definition while nobody can get him on the phone, and the authority to decide slides down to the next class. This has four consequences that between them constitute the whole method.
First, your search has a finish line, which is unusual for this kind of work. You are not looking for everyone. You are looking for a reachable, willing person on the highest rung the hospital has not already exhausted. Once that person is on a phone with the treating team, the search is over even if a dozen relatives remain unfound.
Second, searching downward is legitimate rather than a defeat. Families feel disloyal moving past a rung. The statute does not: it anticipates exactly that and sets the next class out for you. If the adult children cannot be found, a parent is next in all three states read for this page; if no parent, an adult sibling. Working down the list is following it, not abandoning it.
Third, finding somebody can move the decision back up. Illinois is explicit at 755 ILCS 40/25(d): where an individual of higher priority than the identified surrogate “becomes available and willing to be the surrogate”, that individual may be identified as the surrogate. So a spouse located on day three does not arrive too late to matter. It is also the reason to tell the hospital the moment you reach someone rather than after you have finished the whole family.
Fourth, the second person on a rung is not a spare. Where several people share a class and disagree, Illinois provides that a majority of the available persons in that category controls, and Florida’s statute speaks of a majority of the adult children who are reasonably available for consultation. Finding a second adult child can therefore change the outcome and not merely confirm it, which is the single most common thing families get wrong about this: they stop at one.
Two cautions before anyone runs with this. Whether a particular person is available, willing and competent is a determination for the treating physician and the hospital, working from the statute of the state the patient is being treated in. It is not ours and it is not yours. What research produces is a current phone number for a named human being; what that number means in law is somebody else’s call. And “unavailable” carries no judgment about anybody. People move, change numbers, work nights, are mid-flight, are in a hospital themselves. The word is a status, not an accusation.
Illinois and New York, Read Line by Line
The lists rhyme at the top and diverge fast. Two statutes read at the state’s own site, set out in full so you can see where they part company.
Illinois — Health Care Surrogate Act, 755 ILCS 40/25(a)
- The patient’s guardian of the person
- The patient’s spouse
- Any adult son or daughter of the patient
- Either parent of the patient
- Any adult brother or sister of the patient
- Any adult grandchild of the patient
- A close friend of the patient
- The patient’s guardian of the estate
- A temporary custodian appointed under the Juvenile Court Act of 1987, where the court has granted that authority
Nine ranked classes. The Act also directs that a reasonable inquiry includes identifying a family member or health care agent by examining the patient’s personal effects or medical records, and that once such a person is identified, an attempt to contact them by telephone must be made within 24 hours of the provider’s determination that the patient lacks decisional capacity.
New York — Family Health Care Decisions Act, Public Health Law § 2994-d(1)
- A guardian authorized to decide about health care under article 81 of the mental hygiene law
- The spouse, if not legally separated from the patient, or the domestic partner
- A son or daughter eighteen years of age or older
- A parent
- A brother or sister eighteen years of age or older
- A close friend
Six classes. New York also allows the identified surrogate to designate any other person on the list instead, provided nobody in a higher class objects.
Now the differences, because they are where a confident nationwide answer would have made you wrong. Illinois gives an adult grandchild a rung of its own, above a close friend. New York’s list has no grandchild class at all. Where a patient’s children have predeceased them and a granddaughter has been the one showing up, that is the difference between a named statutory position and no position — not the same thing as being irrelevant, but not the same thing as being on the list either. New York names a domestic partner alongside the spouse in the same class; the Illinois provision reads simply “the patient’s spouse.” New York’s spouse class also carries a qualifier Illinois’s does not, excluding a spouse legally separated from the patient. And New York bars hospital operators, administrators, employees and credentialed clinicians from acting as surrogate unless they are related to the patient or were a close friend before the admission.
Illinois puts a procedural condition where New York does not. The Act defines a close friend as someone eighteen or older who has exhibited special care and concern and who presents an affidavit to the attending physician stating that they are a close friend, are willing and able to become involved, and have kept up such regular contact as to be familiar with the patient’s activities, health, and religious and moral beliefs — and the affidavit must set out the facts and circumstances demonstrating that familiarity. A devoted neighbor of thirty years does not step into the role in Illinois by being obviously devoted. There is a document to sign.
A third state, and a rung most people do not know exists
Florida is worth reading because of what it does after the family runs out. Under Fla. Stat. § 765.401, the order runs guardian, spouse, adult child (or, where there is more than one, a majority of those reasonably available for consultation), parent, adult sibling (or a majority), then an adult relative who has exhibited special care and concern, maintained regular contact, and is familiar with the patient’s activities, health, and religious or moral beliefs, then a close friend. And then a rung that exists in almost no family’s imagination: a clinical social worker licensed under Florida’s chapter 491, or a graduate of a court-approved guardianship program, selected by the provider’s bioethics committee and not employed by that provider. Florida also requires that documentation of efforts to locate proxies from prior classes be recorded in the patient record — in that state the searching is itself a documented duty, not a courtesy.
Three states, three different lists. Do not carry any of them to a fourth. What the order is where your patient is being treated, and which class has been reached, is a question for the hospital and for a lawyer in that state, and it is one they can usually answer in a single phone call. Everything on this page is general information about how these statutes are built, offered so you know what to ask — it is not legal advice and it is not medical advice, and it cannot tell you who decides for a specific patient.
Where a Decision-Maker Actually Comes From
Six sources, in the order a hospital works them. Records research is one of the later ones and only sometimes needed at all.
| Source | What it produces | When it is the right one |
|---|---|---|
| An appointed health care agent | A person with express authority who outranks the whole family order, usually with contact details written on the document | Always check first; one found document ends the search |
| A state directive registry | The document itself, released on that state’s own access rules — to the provider in California, from a card and password in North Carolina | Where the patient may have registered, and only in states that run one |
| The hospital’s own search | Contact attempts logged in the chart, plus lawful use of the patient’s records to identify or locate family under 45 CFR 164.510(b) | Always, and before yours; ask what has already been tried |
| Family and personal networks | The fastest contact by a wide margin, because somebody usually knows somebody | Whenever a relative, neighbor, church or old address book is within reach |
| Public-records research | A current address and phone number for a specifically named relative on a specifically named rungOur part | Only where the family genuinely does not know where that person went |
| Court-appointed guardian or an ethics route | Legal authority created where no surrogate exists, on a court’s timetable or a committee’s | When the list is exhausted; the hospital initiates this, not you |
| The point of the table | Five of these six are free and faster than we are. Our row is the narrow one: a named person, a known relationship, and a family that has genuinely lost track of them. | |
The third row is the one most families never think to use, so it is worth spelling out. Under 45 CFR § 164.510(b), a covered entity may use or disclose protected health information “to notify, or assist in the notification of (including identifying or locating), a family member, a personal representative of the individual, or another person responsible for the care of the individual” of that individual’s location, general condition or death; and where the patient is incapacitated or the circumstances are an emergency, the entity may determine in the exercise of professional judgment whether disclosure is in the patient’s best interests and disclose only what is directly relevant. In plain terms: the hospital has express federal permission to do the looking, using information you do not have and cannot lawfully get. Ask the social work team what they have already run before you spend a dollar anywhere.
Facts That Reorder the Search
Each of these changes who you should be looking for, and several of them change it depending on which state the patient is in.
Married, but separated for years
New York’s spouse class expressly excludes a spouse legally separated from the patient; the Illinois provision says only “the patient’s spouse.” Same household history, potentially different answer, purely because of the state. Give the hospital the fact and let it apply its own statute.
Three adult children who do not agree
Illinois puts control with a majority of the available persons in that class; Florida speaks of a majority of the adult children reasonably available for consultation. Finding the third sibling is not tidiness. It can decide the question.
The granddaughter is the only one left
Illinois ranks an adult grandchild sixth, above a close friend. New York’s list does not name grandchildren at all. Where a patient outlived their children, that difference decides whether your search target is a person with a statutory rung or a person who has to qualify some other way.
A friend who has been the real caregiver
Illinois requires that friend to present an affidavit to the attending physician setting out the facts that show familiarity with the patient’s life and beliefs. Florida ranks an adult relative who has shown special care and concern ahead of a close friend. Devotion is not self-executing anywhere.
Everyone is certain a directive exists
Then the search is for paper, not people: the property bag, the primary care chart, prior admissions, the facility file, the attorney who drew the will, and a state registry if that state runs one. Finding it ends the family search outright.
Nobody at all can be found
The lists anticipate this. Illinois provides for a court-appointed guardian where no surrogate is available after reasonable inquiry, while expressly not requiring any provider to seek one; Florida ends its order with a licensed clinical social worker chosen by the provider’s bioethics committee. The hospital drives both routes.
Two adjacent situations belong to different searches entirely and it is worth knowing which one you are in. Where the patient has already died and the task is reaching relatives so they can be told, that is a notification problem with its own conventions, and our guide to locating next of kin for a notification is the right one. Where the person you cannot reach has been living in a facility and the trail went cold there, start with finding a relative in a nursing home instead.
If the Search Really Is Yours to Run
Four steps, and the first one is free. Most people who reach this page never need the other three.
Ask the hospital what it has already done
Which state’s statute governs, which class has been reached, who has been called, and whether the chart holds a directive or an old contact sheet. Ask for the social work or case management team by name. This costs nothing and frequently ends the whole thing.
Tell us the rung, not just the name
We ask who the person is to the patient, which state the patient is being treated in, what the hospital has already tried, and what your own connection is. A search aimed at a specific class is faster and narrower than “find any relative”, and it is also how we keep the work inside a purpose the law permits.
We work the lawful record set, quietly
Property and tax rolls, court and probate indexes, licensed sources used strictly within their permissible-use rules, address-change signals, and the occasional obituary that names surviving children. No pretext calls, no account contents, no live handset location, and no phone call in which we explain to a stranger why we are looking.
You get contact details and the sourcing behind them
An address and a number for a named person, with where each came from, so the hospital can judge it. We do not contact the relative, we do not speak to the treating team on your behalf, and we do not tell you who is entitled to decide — that determination sits with the hospital under its own state’s statute.
The Limits We Work Inside, Written Out
A page about a medical emergency is exactly the page a bad-faith request will arrive through, so these are stated rather than implied.
We are a skip tracing and public records research firm. Nobody here holds a private investigator’s license, we are not licensed private investigators, and we never describe ourselves as any: no surveillance, no doorstep visits, no attendance at a hospital, and no role in any conversation with the treating team. Neither do we reach anything outside the lawful record set. No live handset location, no cell-site data, no message contents, no account access, and no privileged channel that other firms mysteriously lack. Anyone offering those things on a topic this urgent is trading on your panic.
Every file opens on a stated lawful purpose, and we ask for yours before we start rather than after you have paid. Where a source is regulated — driver and vehicle records under the Driver’s Privacy Protection Act, financial identifiers under the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act — we use it only where a permissible use genuinely applies and we record which one it was. We do not use pretext. Nobody here telephones an employer, a neighbor, a landlord or a relative pretending to be someone else, and on this subject that boundary has a sharp edge worth naming: we will not call anyone claiming to be the hospital, which would be both a lie and, in this context, an unusually cruel one. Nor do we obtain private financial account contents. Balances, statements and transaction histories are not ours to take and are not on the table whatever the reason for asking.
The patient’s situation is not ours to broadcast, either. Locating work on a medical matter can be done without telling a single third party why. We do not disclose a patient’s condition, diagnosis, prognosis or location to anyone in the course of a search without authorization, and we do not use the emergency itself as a lever to get somebody talking. If a search can only be completed by explaining to a stranger that someone is dying, it will not be completed by us.
We are not a consumer reporting agency and nothing we produce is a consumer report under the Fair Credit Reporting Act. Our work may not be used to decide employment, credit, insurance underwriting, housing or tenancy, licensing, or any comparable judgment about a person’s eligibility — those decisions require a consumer reporting agency and the disclosure, authorization and adverse-action machinery the Act builds around them. It is an unlikely misuse of a page like this one, and we would rather write the sentence than assume.
Then the request we turn down, and this page attracts a particular version of it. A relative on a statutory list may be estranged, and sometimes for reasons that matter enormously — a protective order, an assault, a childhood nobody talks about, years of deliberate silence bought at real cost. The hierarchy is a legal order of precedence, not a moral ranking, and it does not certify anybody as safe to contact. An urgent medical framing is also, bluntly, the most sympathetic story a person looking for someone who fled them could possibly tell, and we know that. So a request that arrives in these clothes gets more scrutiny at intake, not less: we ask who the patient is, which facility, what the hospital has already tried, and why the ordinary route is not working, and we stop where those answers do not hold together. Where the person being sought went quiet in order to get away from the person asking, we decline the work, whoever is asking and however the request is dressed. We would far rather turn away a genuinely desperate family than hand over the address that gets somebody hurt. If you are the person who left and you believe you are being traced, speak to a victim-services advocate or to the court that issued your order about your state’s Address Confidentiality Program, and take it as settled that no legitimate research firm should be helping anyone work around it.
Two more things a page like this has to say plainly. Nothing here is legal advice or medical advice. Which statute applies, which class has been reached, whether a document is valid and what any of it means for a particular patient are questions for counsel in that state and for the treating team — and where a guardianship may be needed, that is a lawyer’s job and a court’s, urgently. And nothing here says that you may decide. Finding the person the statute points at is a genuinely useful thing to do for someone you love. It is not the same as becoming that person, and no amount of being the one who showed up converts into authority the statute gave to somebody else.
Who Is Doing the Looking
Rarely the person the statute names. Usually the one standing closest with a phone in their hand.
One adult child of several
At the bedside, looking for the brother nobody has heard from in six years.
A sibling of the patient
Ranked below the children, and holding the only address anyone has for them.
An unmarried partner
Twenty years together, no marriage, no directive, and in many states no rung at all.
Hospital social workers
Running the statutory inquiry, documenting it, and out of leads by lunchtime.
Long-term care staff
A resident deteriorating fast and a face sheet last updated eleven years ago.
Attorneys and guardians
Preparing a petition, and needing the notice list to be complete before filing.
What links them is a specific gap rather than a general one: everybody knows who the missing person is and what they are to the patient. Nobody knows the number. That is the narrowest, most solvable version of a search there is, and it is why the answer for most readers here is a fast address trace rather than an open-ended hunt — and why some readers should close this page and go back to the nurses’ station instead. If the harder version applies and relatives who do know are refusing to say, that is a different problem, worked in our guide to searching when the family will not share what they know.
What We Will and Will Not Say
We will not tell you that we can beat a hospital’s own inquiry, because on a good day we cannot, and the honest version of this service is one that says so before taking an order. What we will do is look at the name and the relationship and tell you within the first conversation whether records research is likely to add anything at all. When it is, you get a current address and number with the sourcing behind each, so the treating team can weigh it rather than take our word. When the records will not carry a confident answer, we say that instead of selling you a maybe at the worst week of your life.
Asked in a Hospital Corridor
Who makes medical decisions if there is no power of attorney?
Many states answer this with a ranked list in statute, and the lists differ. Illinois runs guardian of the person, spouse, adult son or daughter, either parent, adult brother or sister, adult grandchild, close friend, guardian of the estate, and a temporary custodian under the Juvenile Court Act. New York runs guardian, spouse or domestic partner, adult son or daughter, parent, adult brother or sister, close friend. Authority passes to the highest class with someone who is available, willing and competent, so which name is reachable genuinely matters. Which list applies to your patient depends on the state they are being treated in, and the hospital can tell you in one call.
Can doctors treat someone if no family member can be reached?
Emergency care is not conditioned on finding a relative. Under 42 U.S.C. section 1395dd, a hospital emergency department owes an appropriate medical screening examination to anyone who comes to it and, where an emergency medical condition is found, must provide stabilizing treatment within its staff and facilities or an appropriate transfer. Alongside that federal floor, state law and hospital policy recognize an emergency exception to consent where a decision cannot wait and no authorized decision-maker can be reached. What a surrogate is actually needed for is the decision with enough time in it to require one. Ask the treating team what is waiting and how long it can wait.
Which relative should I look for first?
The one highest on the applicable state’s list who is not already ruled out, which is why the first step is asking the hospital which class it has reached. There is no point spending a day on a sibling if two adult children have not been tried. Ask specifically: which statute governs here, which class have you reached, and who have you already called. That single answer converts an open-ended family hunt into one named person on one rung, and it is free.
How do I find someone’s advance directive?
Look in the patient’s own papers and property bag first, then the primary care practice, any hospital with a prior admission, a nursing home or assisted living file, and the attorney who drew up the will, since these documents are usually signed in the same appointment. Some states also run a voluntary registry, and the access rules differ sharply. California’s Secretary of State releases registered information to the registrant’s health care provider, public guardian or legal representative on a request stating the need. North Carolina’s Secretary of State issues the registrant a card whose file number and password, or QR code, open the filed document.
Does the hospital have to consult next of kin?
The duty is defined by the state’s statute, not by a national rule, and several impose a real one. Illinois requires the provider to make a reasonable inquiry into the availability of possible surrogates, including identifying a family member by examining the patient’s personal effects or medical records, with a telephone attempt required within 24 hours of the determination that the patient lacks decisional capacity. Florida requires that efforts to locate proxies from prior classes be documented in the patient record. Ask what has been documented so far; it is often more than families assume.
Can a close friend make medical decisions?
In some states, yes, on the bottom rungs and with conditions. Illinois places a close friend seventh, and requires that person to present an affidavit to the attending physician stating that they are a close friend, are willing and able to become involved, and have kept regular contact enough to know the patient’s activities, health and religious and moral beliefs, with facts demonstrating it. New York names a close friend as its sixth and final class. Florida ranks an adult relative who has shown special care and concern ahead of a close friend. Devotion alone does not create the role anywhere we read.
What if the adult children disagree with each other?
The statutes anticipate it. Illinois provides that where people in the same class disagree, a majority of the available persons in that category controls, and that anyone who objects may initiate guardianship proceedings. Florida frames its adult child and sibling classes around a majority of those reasonably available for consultation. The practical consequence is one families rarely expect: locating a second or third sibling is not administrative tidiness, it can change which decision is authorized. Stopping at the first person you reach is the common mistake.
What happens if no relative can be found at all?
The lists have an ending. Illinois provides that where no surrogate or guardian is available after reasonable inquiry, decisions may be made by a court-appointed guardian, while expressly not requiring any provider to seek that appointment. Florida ends its order with a clinical social worker licensed under chapter 491, or a graduate of a court-approved guardianship program, selected by the provider’s bioethics committee and not employed by that provider. Both routes are driven by the hospital and its counsel rather than by a family member, and a hospital ethics consult is usually the doorway to them.
You Know Who You Need. Nobody Has the Number.
That is the one part of this we are actually useful for, and we will say so quickly if we are not. Send the name, the relationship to the patient, and the state they are being treated in, or put the situation to our team and we will tell you straight whether a search adds anything to what the hospital is already doing. If the wider need is an unfound branch of a family rather than one person, our skip tracing and public-records research covers that ground.
Start a relative search
