An aged New Yorker is suing the town and one among its hospitals after he was mistakenly declared lifeless final 12 months, prompting months of anguish as he struggled to resolve the error.
Shirajul Khan, 70, was left with out insurance coverage for eight months after Kings County Hospital declared him lifeless in April final 12 months, the the New York Daily News reported.
But Khan, of Queens, has by no means been a affected person on the hospital within the East Flatbush borough of Brooklyn. It was a distinct Shirajul Khan who died on April 21 final 12 months after racking up round $90,000 in medical payments, after insurance coverage, for remedy associated to COVID, the newspaper stated.
According to Khan’s lawsuit, which was filed in Brooklyn Supreme Court on Friday, he stopped getting his social safety funds and did not obtain federal stimulus checks due to the mix-up.
Khan went to Medicare to resolve the difficulty together with his insurance coverage and was instructed to go to the hospital, which he did in May final 12 months. The hospital allegedly handed the difficulty from division to division for months.
“This has caused me great pain and suffering… I was clearly not deceased,” Khan stated within the lawsuit, which additionally claims that he fell behind on his mortgage funds by round $40,000 after being declared lifeless.
Khan stated resolving the difficulty was tough at a time when New York City, an early epicenter of the pandemic, was being ravaged by COVID.
“It has been exceedingly difficult for me and my family to deal with and resolve, especially since it all happened during the first months when the global pandemic caused by the Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) was starting to take over New York City,” he added within the lawsuit.
Khan is suing the town of New York and Kings County Hospital, which is run by the town, for greater than $400,000 in damages, in accordance with the Daily News.
A spokesman for the town hospital system declined to remark when contacted by Newsweek, citing the pending litigation. Khan and his household could not instantly be reached for additional remark.
Khan’s case is not the primary time somebody has struggled to clear issues up after being declared lifeless by mistake.
Last month, it was reported that an 84-year-old Navy veteran had spent months making an attempt to show he wasn’t lifeless after a bureaucratic error.
Charles Roberts’ social safety checks stopped coming after he underwent a minor operation on the VA Medical Center in Washington, D.C., in December, NBC Washington reported.
When a member of the family contacted the Social Security Administration, they found Roberts had been marked as deceased.
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Update 10/6 8.30 a.m. ET: This article has been up to date to mirror that the town hospital system’s spokesman declined to remark.