of more than 10% when looking at 2019 calls versus 2021 calls. This strong growth beyond COVID-19 supports a market share growth story in line with the performance and incentive alignment discussed above. Moreover, when reviewing the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s data of COVID-19 related deaths, we note there were just over 37,000, or 25%, fewer COVID-19 related deaths in the United States in the fourth quarter of 2021 as compared to the fourth quarter of 2020. Despite that significant year over year decrease in COVID-19 related deaths in the United States, our Same Store Funeral businesses saw an increase of more than 300 contracts during that same time period. As Mel often says, “the data don’t lie!”
As we continued to analyze the data, we identified another strong trend which further supports Carriage’s market share growth story. “Preneed maturity” describes the process of when a preneed contract goes atneed and is served. When the preneed maturity rate goes down, that means we are serving more pure walk in atneed families than we are serving preneed families whose contracts go atneed. If the preneed maturity rate goes down and our total contract growth rate goes up, it is highly likely we are gaining market share. The table on page 24 shows the preneed maturity rate for our same store funeral group slowly declining for several years, including a significant decline of more than 2% in 2021 when compared to 2020, despite the total number of calls increasing by more than 3,500 during that same one year period. The combination of these trends strongly supports the growth in market share story that our Managing Partners and Directors of Support have been sharing with us for the past two years.
While we acknowledge COVID-19 related data is far from perfect, we do now have enough insight into reported deaths attributable to COVID-19 to make some roughly right inferences, particularly when that data is supported by other trends within our same store funeral portfolio. When we take a comprehensive look at the new addition of talent to field leadership, the revamped approach to incentive compensation placing an emphasis on margins, and the key updates to our Funeral Standards Operating Model focusing on Compounded Net Revenue, we believe the story over the past three years of Transformative Change can now also be told as a Carriage Market Share Growth Story.
SUPPORT CENTER ORGANIZATION STRUCTURE/TALENT AND CONCEPTUAL VISION UPDATE
Much like the rest of Carriage, our Support Center Teams have seen significant changes over the past three years aimed at strengthening leadership and building a positive high performance culture environment of collaboration. As a self-proclaimed “People First” company, we have looked for ways to make sure we are true to that focus.
First Who, Then What: Those who have followed Carriage over the past few years know that we have been aggressive in identifying and recruiting top talent. While we are excited about the leadership we have in place, we continue to work to identify areas where we can get even better. For example, Carlos mentioned our focus on leveraging technology and recruiting a Chief Information Officer to lead this effort. This is an area, much like sales when Carlos joined, that presents incredible opportunity and upside for our team that has yet to be realized.
Carlos also referenced Shane Pudenz leading our Sales and Marketing team moving forward. It is important to note that our focus on marketing, with Shane and Alfred’s leadership, is new for Carriage. Again, as with sales and technology, a dedicated focus on marketing offers us a new and exciting opportunity for accelerated growth.
Within the teams that I have the privilege of leading, Human Resources, Legal, Risk Management and Business Development, we have incredible internal talent who are Energized, motivated, and doing much more than just offering top notch support to our businesses. These leaders are also identifying new opportunities to help drive our results forward and they broadly perform with a “owner’s mindset” similar to what we see from our Managing Partners. It is an honor to work with this type of talent and it is fun to see the level of pride and excitement they have for Carriage and their fellow teammates.
Right Who’s in the Right Seats: In addition to bringing in new talent to lead critical areas of our growth strategy, we have also focused on involving more talented individuals in key projects and brainstorming sessions, intended to build collaboration and provide a platform for new and innovative ideas to gain traction. This process has also led to asking several leaders to take on new responsibilities, sometimes outside of their background or comfort zone, in an effort to stretch development and drive new thinking. Within some teams, we have created unconventional leadership structures, and more broadly, we have worked to involve leaders from different teams in strategic areas with which they may not have previously been involved. The goal has been, and continues to be, to identify talent and position those individuals to contribute beyond their current responsibilities.
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