– We have a waterproof digital system. When a mistake happens and you are erased from the world, it’s a little hell to shut things up again, Lisbeth Lundestad tells Dagbladet.
She spent six months rising from the dead in the digital world, after she was declared dead by mistake.
It started on March 28 with a message from Digipost. His account had to be closed, because the Swedish Revenue had informed her of her death.
A short time later, “the digital snowball,” as she calls it, had quickly arrived. Bank account, Helsenorge, Revenue Agency, bank ID: everything was no longer available to her.
– I heard I was digitally raped. I called around and many people wanted to help me, but no one knew how, says Lundestad.
Local newspaper The weekend first mentioned the matter.
– He has at least three doppelgangers
Social security number changed
After hours of investigation and countless phone calls, the 54-year-old finally got an answer on what happened when she was pronounced dead.
– There was a doctor who helped me with something medical, who managed to swap my social security number with the social security number of another person who died on shift, he says.
He doesn’t think this particular mistake is that dangerous. It was a human error and he knows that the people involved are sorry for what happened.
– What I want for life are all the problems it creates digitally. You would think it was going to be easy to fix, but it wasn’t. Once such an error occurs, it is almost impossible to reverse.
ACCOUNT CLOSED: The Digipost message was the first warning of the error that occurred. Photo: screenshot
sea View
In parallel with his unveiling the cause of the death notice, Lundestad worked week after week to restore his digital life.
It talks about a canceled doctor’s appointment, problems with Nav Social Security payments, and a bank account that could be closed suddenly – even after notifying various actors of the mistake.
– Isn’t that something only women have?
– It’s scary what’s going on. There was no one who could take responsibility and clean up – mostly I had to do it myself, says Lundestad.
– How was it lived?
– It was horrible. You become so unsure and afraid of what might go wrong next.
The municipality has taken measures
Electronic death notification was introduced in the spring of 2020. Before that, deaths were reported on paper. The Revenue Agency therefore received about 200 canceled death notices per year.
After digitization, updating the logs is significantly faster. Fewer people have been wrongly declared dead, but the consequences for those affected are described by health authorities as “significantly larger”.
In the end, it was county medical assistant Sonja Revhaug who assisted Lisbeth Lundestad in her case.
It concluded with the state administrator of Nordland, who concluded in May that the municipality of Vefsn, where Lundestad lives, had followed the report in line with the legislation.
From the note of the state administrator after a follow-up of supervision by the municipality, it appears that the municipality has implemented measures to avoid similar incidents in the future.
“Council sees that they can learn from the incident and wants it to be clear who is assigned the responsibility to quickly follow up on such incidents,” the statement said.
The municipality: – Terrible situation
The head of the unit for the health service in the municipality of Vefsn, Lill Inger Reinfjell, received the description of the accident and the consequences from Lisbeth Lundestad.
– I think the most important thing is that the story gets out. It was a terrible situation the patient found himself in, Reinfjell replies in an email to Dagbladet.
– As a municipality, we are not authorized to clean up Bankid and the ensuing consequences, but we have fixed the municipal system, family doctor, ambulance, home care and our partner pharmacy.
In addition to cleaning, he says, the council has been working on routines to prevent something like this from happening again and what to do if it does happen.
– It’s very nice that they have new routines, says Lundestad
Seven months after his death declaration, most things are back in order: the accounts with the public bodies are there, but there is still something on the part of the private individuals.
– There are a lot of back and forth spins out there, which can be affected by such mistakes – things you don’t even think about until you experience losing it.
