Maine patients receive "death" notifications in horrific mix-up.
More than 500 people in Maine have received emails from their healthcare provider informing them that they had passed away - but in reality, they were very much alive. The shocking incident highlights a software malfunction at the state's largest healthcare provider, MaineHealth.
The company confirmed on October 20 that it sent out an email to family members of deceased clients as part of its standard procedure. However, due to a technical error, the emails also appeared to have been sent to people who were still living - including healthy individuals with no known health issues. The recipient list included patients from various departments across the healthcare system.
The company quickly apologized for the mistake, stating that "MaineHealth sincerely regrets this error". Despite the miscommunication, MaineHealth confirmed that all the recipients of the emails were alive and well, and that their care was not affected by the technical glitch.
A spokesperson at the nonprofit health-care group acknowledged that an investigation has been launched to determine how the mistake occurred. The software issue has since been resolved, and all those who received the erroneous notifications have been informed via a separate email with an apology from MaineHealth's management team.
More than 500 people in Maine have received emails from their healthcare provider informing them that they had passed away - but in reality, they were very much alive. The shocking incident highlights a software malfunction at the state's largest healthcare provider, MaineHealth.
The company confirmed on October 20 that it sent out an email to family members of deceased clients as part of its standard procedure. However, due to a technical error, the emails also appeared to have been sent to people who were still living - including healthy individuals with no known health issues. The recipient list included patients from various departments across the healthcare system.
The company quickly apologized for the mistake, stating that "MaineHealth sincerely regrets this error". Despite the miscommunication, MaineHealth confirmed that all the recipients of the emails were alive and well, and that their care was not affected by the technical glitch.
A spokesperson at the nonprofit health-care group acknowledged that an investigation has been launched to determine how the mistake occurred. The software issue has since been resolved, and all those who received the erroneous notifications have been informed via a separate email with an apology from MaineHealth's management team.
just saw this news about 500 ppl in Maine getting "death" notifications by mistake 
what's going on?! 
software malfunction is one thing, but who checks the emails to make sure they're sending it to the right people?! 
did some quick math... if 500 ppl are affected and all of them were just fine, that means only 1% of the recipients got a false notification 
hopefully the investigation finds out what went wrong so this doesn't happen again 
Like, what would you do?! Would you freak out? Cry? Or just die of laughter?! 
Can't wait for the investigation to figure out what went wrong so this doesn't happen again. 
Like, what do you say to that? 
. Glad 2 hear that every1 who got that email was actually ok tho 
. can u imagine if it was serious tho? like, someone might've freaked out and taken some drastic actions 
. good job Mainehealth 
. It's like, these healthcare providers are trying their best to help people, but sometimes mistakes happen. And I guess this just goes to show that we need to double-check our emails and stuff before we freak out 
. Fingers crossed that they'll come up with a way to prevent this kind of thing from happening again 
can you even imagine getting that kind of "death" notification 
. the fact that all the people who got those fake death notifications are alive & well is what matters most 
or at least some major security breach going on... we just don't know what's really happening behind the scenes yet 
hopefully they'll be more careful with their emails in the future 
It's crazy that software glitch could affect so many lives and the fact that there was no actual deceased person on those email lists just adds insult to injury 
. As a patient, I would totally freak out if this happened to me or someone I care about 
And poor people who got these emails thinking their loved ones had passed away... it must've been super scary and confusing for them. Glad everyone is okay, though! The fact that it was just a tech error makes you wonder how often this happens in healthcare... hopefully they get to the bottom of it soon 
Anyway, glad to hear they've fixed the issue and all living people are good to go now 
Anyway, hope those who got affected are doing alright now 
! It's crazy that this software malfunction affected so many people, but thankfully no one was actually harmed or misdiagnosed. The fact that it was a mix-up during the standard procedure of notifying family members of passing patients is just... wow 
. I hope they get to the bottom of what went wrong and make sure something like this never happens again