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MED CENTER SENDS CANCER SCARE TEST INSTEAD OF XMAS CARD
Imagine scrolling through your inbox a couple of days before Christmas, casually reading heart-warming holiday wishes and then finding a message from your medical center notifying you that you have “aggressive” cancer.
This is the kind of message that could cause someone a heart attack, or at least a panic attack, not to mention really spoiling Christmas! Sending one person such a message by mistake would be considered a serious error, but sending that message to thousands of patients is nothing short of a catastrophe.
The Askern Medical Practice in Doncaster, UK, has around 8,000 patients, and on December 23, last year, it accidentally sent a cancer notification to most, if not all, of them. The text informed clients that they had “aggressive lung cancer with metastases” and advised them to fill out a special form for people with terminal diseases.
As you can imagine, for many recipients, reading the text was a horrifying experience. Some had actually gone in for various tests recently and were expecting results, so learning that they had an aggressive cancer was terrible.
“I had just had a mole removed and was awaiting a result from a biopsy, so, yes, I was very worried,” one woman said, adding that she “felt sick to my teeth and broke down. It completely took me by surprise. It is not often I go to the doctors. Then, out of the blue, it is cancer.”
Another Askern client complained, “They have just told people a few days before Christmas that they have got terminal lung cancer. They cannot do that!”
Luckily, the nightmare was short-lived, and only about an hour after the first text, patients received a second message telling them that the first one had been a mistake.
Askern Medical Practice had intended to send an automated “Merry Christmas” message to its clients, but it somehow ended up telling them that they all had deadly lung cancer.
Some computer tech belongs on Santa’s “Naughty List.”
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