Of the approximately 2.8 million death reports the Social Security Administration receives per year, about 14,000 -- or one in every 200 deaths -- are incorrectly entered into its Death Master File, which contains the Social Security numbers, names, birth dates, death dates, zip codes and last-known residences of more than 87 million deceased Americans. That averages out to 38 life-altering mistakes a day. ..."It is unfortunate, but some of the death data that we post to our records ... proves to be wrong and we correct it as soon as possible," said administration spokesman Mark Hinkle. "Usually the error was inadvertently caused because of a human typing error when death information was entered into a computer system."This inaccurate information is then sold to the public, as well as to banks and credit bureaus.Those who are declared dead not only lose their ability to apply for credit or receive benefits, but they are also at a high risk for identity theft now that all of their personally-identifying information has been made public.In one review, the Inspector General found that months after the Social Security Administration deleted incorrect information from the database, the personally identifiable information of 28% of the individuals was still publicly available on at least one other web site.
Aug 17, 2011
"38 Life-Altering Mistakes A Day"
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7 comments:
The fact that erroneous death notices get into the master file and released to the public is an error that is solely the responsibility of SSA. It would be a simple matter to "kick out" death reports wherein the SSN reported does not match the numident information. If SSA is not already doing that, they should be ashamed of themselves.
seriously, dude--it would be just so simple, yeah, if we had 20-30 thousand more employees so we could get that done after all of the other work that is undone or screwed up. Welcome to planet earth.
Hey Dude. It;s called programming a computer.
Maybe not the case with all the errors, but it's too easy to call the 800# and report someone as dead.
Anyone can call and procedure doesn't have them request the SSN and DOB of the caller and check it against the SSN record.
Just their name, address, phone number, and relationship to the deceased. They also need the stiff's name, SSN and DOB.
Most of these errors are caused by hospitals reporting someone discharged as deceased-which is transmitted to Medicare which then transmits this info to SSA. Medicare death match cases are an old workload which has never been resolved because Medicare and SSA databases have never been put on the same system. It's bureaucracy. BTW, I worked these stupid cases for years.
I agree it is largely a problem with Medicare and hospital death reports. The numident check suggested by comment #1 is off base.
Sometimes it's human error. Years ago, when my father died, both he and my mother were annotated on SSA records as deceased and her own check was stopped. It took several months to get it straightened out, even though I promptly took her to the local social security office to prove she was still alive. Now, I'd have to worry about identity theft, too!
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