A black patient without identification receiving treatment at Beaumont Hospital-Farmington Hills (Mich.) was unintentionally assigned a racially insensitive identifier by the hospital's EHR, according to Fox 2 News.
On Feb. 1, authorities claim the unidentified man attacked a Detroit police officer, who proceeded to shoot the individual multiple times. Emergency medical technicians arrived at the scene and transported the man to the Farmington Hills hospital, according to the report.
Because the patient did not possess identification, the hospital's EHR assigned the individual a randomly generated name: "Mwatermelon Undoe," Fox 2 News reports.
Beaumont Health told Becker's Hospital Review in a statement via email Feb. 7 the health system uses the same EHR across its eight hospitals.
"This EMR system allows us to automatically generate a unique name identifier for 'John Doe' patients who come into our hospitals without identification. This name identifier is randomly assigned from a list of words in the system. First names are randomly drawn from a list of colors and fruits. Last names are randomly drawn from a list of states," the statement reads.
"We've never heard of a situation like this before. We are modifying our system and alerting our EHR provider so they can notify other hospitals. We regret this misunderstanding and any offense it might have caused."