In a terrible case of mistaken identity, a hospital in Vancouver, Canada, allowed a family to end life support on a man they thought was a relative.
The Danielson family had faced a heavy decision after an unexpected phone call in the middle of the night. Their loved one was on life support, PeaceHealth Southwest Medical Centre hospital staff told them, after a horrible choking incident.
“They told me my brother, Mike, was basically brain dead,” said Debbie Danielson. “They asked if we wanted to keep him on life support or ‘do you want to pull the plug?’”
After a brief discussion with her husband, Danielson told the hospital to pull her 60-year-old brother off life support.
“Michael A Beehler, 60, Vancouver, died August 9, 2021,” read a death notice posted in The Columbian newspaper.
“That whole week was a blur. Trying to make funeral arrangements, letting family know he had died,” said Danielson.
Then came the phone call no one expected, reports KGW. It was her brother, Mike. He wasn’t dead. Instead, he was very much alive.
“I said, ‘You can’t be alive. You’re dead!’” said his sister.
In a terrible case of mistaken identity that has never been publicly disclosed, the hospital had allowed a family to pull the plug on the wrong man.
“We made life-ending decisions for a person we don’t even know,” said Danielson’s husband, Gary.
The medical mix-up started with the 911 call on 8 August 2021. Medics responded to an apartment in Vancouver. Mike Beehler said his roommate choked on a piece of steak at dinner. The man was not breathing and unconscious, according to an emergency dispatch log.
“He fell over a chair,” said Beehler. “I thought he was dead then.”
An ambulance transported the man to PeaceHealth Southwest Medical Centre. But, somewhere along the line, the roommate was misidentified, and the hospital incorrectly treated him as Mike Beehler.
His family claims Beehler had previously been treated at PeaceHealth Southwest Medical Centre and had medical files on record, which may explain why the hospital knew to call his sister in an emergency.
PeaceHealth Southwest Medical Centre called the county medical examiner’s office to report the death, then sent the misidentified body to the funeral home, according to emails from the Clark County Medical Examiner’s Office.
The funeral home asked the wrong family about final wishes, cremation and organ donation.
“When we went to the funeral director, I asked, ‘Don’t we need to identify him?’ 'No, we’ll just take it from here,” recalled Beehler’s brother-in-law, Gary Danielson.
All County Cremation and Burial Services declined to comment.
It wasn’t until Beehler made that unexpected call to his sister a week later, concerned because his cellphone account had been shut down, that anyone realised the roommates had been switched at death.
On 14 August 2021, Beehler’s family called authorities about the mistake.
The Clark County Medical Examiner’s Office said it later retrieved the body from the funeral home, conducted an external examination and used fingerprints to confirm identity. The medical examiner confirmed it was Beehler’s roommate who had died.
A new death notice was published. “David C. Wells, 69, Vancouver, died 9 August 2021.”
The Clark County Medical Examiner’s Office then notified Wells' next-of-kin, his son in California.
“They told me there was a medical emergency regarding my father. He had been pronounced dead,” said Shawn Wells.
At the time, nobody told him about the mix-up – not the medical examiner, not the hospital or the funeral home.
He travelled from his home in San Jose to make funeral arrangements in Vancouver – then returned to California with his father’s cremated remains, unaware of the mix-up.
It wasn’t until a KGW reporter contacted Wells’ family, more than two years later, that they discovered he had been misidentified and taken off life support by strangers.
“I'm at a loss for words on how badly they handled this,” said Shawn, who added that his father had a distinct tattoo on his arm, which might have raised red flags if comparisons were made between the patient and the medical files they had consulted.
“It would have been a very easily identifiable mark on his body. Even if there were any slight confusion about his identity, it would have been quickly resolved.”
Shawn said he’s since gone back and looked through paperwork surrounding his father’s death. The only mention of misidentification he could find was in the coroner’s report, which he hadn’t previously opened fearing the grim details of his father’s death.
Beyond that, there’s been no explanation or apology.
“It’s disturbing. I don't know if I’m going to get over it. They dropped the ball so egregiously,” he said.
Beehler’s family was also met with silence.
“I still don’t know what happened,” said Gary Danielson. “We never got an explanation. We never got a sorry or anything.”
PeaceHealth declined to answer any questions or explain the mix-up, citing federal patient privacy law.
As a result of the case, the Clark County Medical Examiner’s office has changed its internal policy, according to a county spokesperson. It now requires funeral homes, healthcare facilities or other providers requesting death certification to have family identify bodies.
If family identification isn’t possible, the decedent is brought to the medical examiner’s office for other forms of identification, including fingerprinting.
Apologies vital
When mistakes are made, it is important to apologise, said Dr Thomas Gallagher, a practising internist and researcher of patient safety and medical ethics at the University of Washington.
“Any time something goes wrong in healthcare, it really is important that the practitioners and the organisation proactively contact the patient and the family to let them know what happened, to explain what took place and to apologise.”
Traditionally, organisations have avoided disclosing errors – on advice from their risk managers and attorneys worried about litigation, embarrassment or damage to reputation.
But Gallagher believes providers are obligated to do their own internal reviews when something goes wrong, to determine if anything could have been done differently and to prevent recurrences.
A PeaceHealth spokesperson wouldn’t say if there had been any internal review into the mix-up between the roommates.
See more from MedicalBrief archives:
Staying out of trouble with Notification of Death certificates
Bara newborn sent home with wrong mother
Newborn baby to be exhumed for DNA testing over ‘mistaken identity’