Scarborough woman wants answers after being told she is dead
Scarborough woman wants answers after being told she is dead
Susan Johnson was told by hospital staff she had died four months earlier as she waited for a scan.
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/20347898
Archive/mirror: https://archive.ph/1pl5L
Mrs Johnson, from Scarborough, attended her hospital appointment in March 2023.
The mother-of-two said: "I gave them my letter and their first words were, 'ooh you're dead'.
"I said, 'pardon?'. I was in shock.
...
The retired housekeeper contacted her GP and was told the mistake had been fixed.
However, when she contacted the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) the bemused call handler told her: "On the computer you're dead".
"I said, 'I'm not, I'm still talking to you'.
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Quite a non story, working in the medical field... Obviously it's a mistake and shouldn't have happened, but why would one be "shaking like a leaf" because a computer screen says you died 4 months ago? Like, do you think you're gonna drop dead because that's what the computer says? Or that you've actually been dead this whole time and you're just imagining it?
"Whoever did it, whoever pressed the button, shouldn't be working where they're working" 🙄 ok grandma let's get you home.
Being declared dead can have a lot of consequences, especially financially. I'd be shaking.
...in frustration and anger.
To explain a bit, institutions will likely freeze all your accounts (including your money) until the mistake is "officially" corrected. This means without family or a friend to help, you can easily get stuck.
The institutions should be prepared for this happening though
It would be tricky as they can only release them with an official correction, which can take time.
One of the biggest reasons they would freeze them is for fraud prevention. If there is any activity on an account when a person is supposed to be dead, it would indicate something is awry and it's their duty to prevent it.
They are, that's why they freeze things first and only proceed when they get a copy of the death certificate. Someone has to give them the death certificate, which is why nothing happened here for 4 months.
For bank accounts, this means you can't withdraw their money until it's gone through probate. However, if it's a joint account then the surviving account holder can still use the account as normal. However if no one's pushing for probate (and without death certificates) nothing much will happen for a while.
This is why it's a bit of a non-story, nothing major happened ultimately, nothing was likely to happen soon (her carer's payments stopped temporarily but it sounds like she didn't realise until after the hospital appointment), and if anything the most surprising thing is that it took the "dead" person 4 months to even notice the mistake.
the article says she lost a government payment she was receiving for a few a months.