A woman reportedly learned she had died while on her way to a hospital appointment.
Susan Johnson, 62, went to Bridlington Hospital, Yorkshire, England, for a check-up in March 2023. But when she arrived, staff told her that records showed she had died for four months, the BBC reported.
“I gave them my letter and their first words were, ‘Ooh, you’re dead.’ I said, ‘Sorry?’ I was in shock,” Johnson said.
Staff entered some details into the computer so she could still receive the scan, but the experience left her “shaking like a leaf”, Johnson told the BBC.
She contacted her primary care doctors, Scarborough Medical Group, who told the BBC the error had been corrected.
However, when Johnson called the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), the British government department responsible for welfare benefits, the call handler told her: “On the computer, you are dead,” she recalls .
NHS England told Business Insider it was “aware of an issue involving a civil death record incorrectly recorded in a patient’s medical record.”
In a statement it said: “This was removed within 24 hours of being notified in March 2023 and the patient was re-registered by their GP. We encourage the patient to contact us directly so we can explain further. “
But NHS England would not have informed another government department, such as the DWP, of a death.
Scarborough Medical Group had not responded to a request for comment from Business Insider when this article went live.
Johnson still doesn’t know how she was registered as dead.
“I need to find out why this happened, how and by whom, and that person, whoever pushed a button, should not be working anywhere,” she told the BBC.
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