New instructions for healthcare workers to double-check patient’s identities are primarily intended to cut down on human inputting errors, Health Minister Jo Etienne Abela said.

Abela admitted that a circular issued to government healthcare staff on Tuesday, which instructed staff to confirm the patient’s identity by asking for their ID number, full name and date of birth, was in response to recent allegations of identity theft.

“We don’t live in a bubble. We obviously take note of what is happening around us,” Abela said when asked why this measure was only introduced now.

Abela admitted that health authorities had come across “several situations where there were mistakes” but insisted that most inconsistencies are down to human error, often at the point when a person is registered to the system.

“Whoever is inputting patient details is human and humans all make mistakes. Even a single changed digit can bring up somebody else’s records.”

Abela said that the new measures are intended “to make sure that our system is more robust” and do away with as many of these “mistakes” as possible by beefing up the verification process.

'Improving level of security is a positive step'

“I’ve worked in hospitals, even in Malta, in which there are different ways to identify patients,” Abela said. “Improving our level of security in the public health service is a positive step.”

Allegations of identity fraud hit the limelight in recent weeks, after former MP Jason Azzopardi called for a magisterial inquiry, claiming that some 18,000 identity cards were issued on the back of documents fabricated by Identità officials since 2015.

The fears grew over the following weeks, with a spate of reports of possible identity theft being flagged, including within Malta’s healthcare services.

One man who visited a healthcare clinic for a checkup in August discovered, much to his dismay, that his medical records listed him as having died in March.

Meanwhile, at least a dozen others say they faced similarly surreal scenarios, from phantom hospital appointments to diagnoses of illnesses they never contracted.

Elsewhere, scores of people reported receiving letters from telecoms company Epic addressed to people who never lived at the listed address.

Suspicions over the possible racket intensified late last month after a man admitted to fixing letterboxes to residences to provide addresses for residence permits for third-country nationals.