José grew up playing hockey, volunteering, teaching skating and having a self-described “pretty normal childhood” in East Vancouver. His family immigrated to Canada from Venezuela when he was eight, but he says even that didn’t make him stand out much — lots of kids in his school had similar stories.
But José’s sense of normalcy changed 16 years later when someone he went to high school with stole his identity, using it in interactions with hospitals and transit police. It had dire physical, emotional, social and financial impacts on his life.
The identity theft has had ongoing consequences for José, who is still undoing the damage. For him, it raises questions about how health care and police identify people of colour, and how authorities can refine their policies to ensure that Vancouverites who don’t have identification can still access medical care when needed — but not at the expense of people like him.
When the man who stole José’s identity landed in the hospital, he provided two of José’s four names, alongside his own childhood address to paramedics and later hospital staff. Though the address he gave didn’t match the one associated with José’s record, the man was admitted to hospital as José.
José says it’s possible racism played into this mistake, because he and the man who stole his identity are both Latin American.
The Tyee has agreed to only share José’s first name due to concerns that he or his family could face social or economic repercussions for speaking to the media. With his permission The Tyee reviewed José’s government-issued ID, medical records, police records and a dozen emails with officials related to these events.
The Tyee will refer to the man who used José’s identity by the pseudonym John Doe. The Tyee was not able to contact John Doe or his family for this article.
Since 2017 Doe has accessed health care using José’s identity at least seven times — five times in Vancouver and three times in Maple Ridge. Doe also accessed emergency care after a toxic drug poisoning. He has also claimed to be José when he was caught riding transit without a fare, racking up tickets in José’s name.
There are a lot of reasons someone might not want to use their own name when dealing with police and hospitals, says Tyson Singh Kelsall, a Downtown Eastside social worker and PhD candidate at Simon Fraser University.
A person’s health record can get flagged if a patient is known to use drugs or be aggressive or violent towards health-care workers, Singh Kelsall says. If a patient thinks they’ll face discrimination they may use another name to reduce the stigma against them and access better care.
It’s possible Doe lost his ID and didn’t think he’d be able to access care under his own name, he says.
Singh Kelsall says it’s difficult to keep track of identification when you’re struggling with housing. Once you lose your ID, it’s tricky to get it back. Generally the government requires ID to prove who you are so you can get a replacement ID, he says. If you were born in Canada this process can take months and if you were born internationally it can take years.
“There’s a lot riding on ID,” Singh Kelsall adds. It’s required to access health care, for income assistance programming, even to access the Greater Vancouver Food Bank.
José’s own interaction with police
José learned about the identity theft after he had an encounter with police that left him severely physically and mentally traumatized.
As a young adult José was employed in fine dining in Vancouver, working as a bartender, manager and server over a decade, modelling for Lululemon and living in a gentrified part of Chinatown. His life was busy, but he coped with the stress by doing yoga.
On July 11, 2017, at 24 years old, all that changed.
José says he doesn’t remember what happened that night because of a concussion. But he does have a handful of documents from the incident, which he says leaves him with more questions than answers.
The police incident report, which he showed to The Tyee, says police found José’s car parked four blocks from his home and suspected it might have been stolen by a drunk driver.
When police ran the plates, they identified José as the car’s owner. They then saw a man — José — walking down the alley towards the car and assumed he had been driving the car, which had been left unlocked.
José says he could have been trying to meet his friend, who lived beside where the car was parked.
In the report police say José “in-explicitly” threw himself onto the hood of the parked police car and, when officers pulled him off, his face hit the ground. He was then handcuffed by three police.
The police report says police spoke with José to determine how injured he was. The report identifies José as both the injured man and the car’s owner, but doesn’t say when exactly police realized that José was in fact the car’s owner, and not someone attempting to steal the car.
Singh Kelsall says this is a “scary example” of what happens once you get profiled as using drugs or regularly interacting with police. Doe had several transit tickets under José’s name by this time.
“You get coded as a drug user and your face gets smashed in. That’s par for the course for the Downtown Eastside,” Singh Kelsall says, noting the neighbourhood has a high rate of police violence.
José says his wallet didn’t make it to the hospital. Instead, it arrived in the mail a week later with a note that someone had placed his wallet in a Canada Post box. His phone disappeared.
José says he woke up at the hospital confused, in pain and with a face full of gauze. The only thing he remembered was a flash of light and the feeling of handcuffs on his wrists.
His Vancouver General Hospital Emergency Room record, which he shared with The Tyee, says he was “suspected of stealing a car/resisting arrest,” that he had his “face smashed during an altercation” and that he had “OD’d on heroin in the past.” It also noted that the “patient wants to call his mother.”
The only part of the report that’s true is that he wanted to call his parents, José says.
José says hospital staff acted very hostile towards him, refusing to tell him what had happened or where his phone or wallet were.
He says hospital staff were likely concerned by what they read on his chart — but notes the police had cleared him of any wrongdoing before the ambulance was called, according to their own report.
José left the hospital against medical advice and asked a cab driver to take him to his parent’s house in Coquitlam.
His parents then took him to Eagle Ridge hospital where he was treated for a nose and jaw fracture, three missing teeth, a broken tooth, cuts to his lips and a jaw that had been knocked out of place. Doctors wired his jaw shut.
Discovering the identity theft
José moved back in with his parents while he recovered. That’s when the hospital bills and transit police tickets started arriving.
Though the bills were addressed to him, they were for ambulance rides he’d never taken and fares he’d never evaded.
José realized his identity had been stolen. Someone else was claiming to be him, accessing medical care under his personal health number and interacting with police across the Lower Mainland.
His family filed freedom of information requests with several government agencies to find all documents related to José’s name. The earliest document they found was an ambulance report from April 2017 where the name and address Doe provided didn’t match.
When he looked up the address, José discovered it was where Doe used to live when they were both in high school together. Doe had even invited José to have dinner with his family there.
José says he and Doe had been close in early high school and played sports together. They drifted apart after Grade 11 and didn’t maintain contact.
In 2016 José spotted Doe, who he says appeared to be using drugs and living on the street in Chinatown. He contacted Doe’s sister through Facebook and learned he had been using drugs.
A year later, Doe told paramedics he was José for the first time.
Medical record mishaps
In January 2018 José contacted various health authorities, letting them know his identity had been stolen. He says they separated his medical record from Doe’s medical record, putting Doe under an unnamed profile.
“I had to trust they were doing everything that they could, that they had a playbook and did a thorough job,” he says.
But his record wasn’t fully cleared.
Electronic medical records can be accessed by several different government entities beyond a single hospital. This meant that José’s family doctor unknowingly had an outdated version of the record.
That came up when José applied for an unrelated WorkSafeBC claim in 2022. The claim was rejected, and José suspects the decision was related to a medical disclosure from his doctor that listed the fraudulent medical history.
Providence Health Authority spokesperson Ann Gibbon says anyone who had accessed José’s health records would have been notified of the correction and that it is up to those individuals or organizations to update their records from there.
José says it is “extremely frustrating” that the onus to correct the hospital’s mistakes has fallen to him. He says Doe is still accessing care under his identity and he keeps having to go back and notify hospital staff when a new incident appears on his BC Health Gateway portal.
“Why does the victim of the crime have to do all of this re-traumatizing work?” he asks.
José says police have flagged him as a victim of identity theft and any officer who looks him up can see pictures of him and Doe side by side to prevent Doe from claiming to be him in the future.
José says he recently heard that his electronic health record has been similarly flagged.
Looking for solutions
Providence Health Care’s patient identification policy requires asking a patient to present a government-issued photo ID and a health insurance card, according to a document shared by Providence.
If a patient is unable to provide ID, the document continues, a health-care worker can search electronic health records to see if the patient’s declared name has a Personal Health Number. If a patient’s electronic health record can’t be found and they can’t provide ID, they “may be registered using a declared name.”
It’s possible this is how Doe accessed health care under José’s name.
A Providence spokesperson said they were unable to comment on José or Doe’s record due to patient confidentiality.
So what’s the best way for hospitals to help prevent identity thefts like the one that happen to José in the future?
Singh Kelsall says requiring everyone to present identification before accessing care isn’t necessarily a solution because that could deny people necessary medical care. A better way to approach it could be to reduce the barriers around accessing ID, he says, pointing to a report from this April that lists reducing barriers around ID as one way to reduce the harms caused by poverty.
José says he hasn’t been compensated for any of his medical expenses, such as getting four implants to replace the teeth he lost, or the time he couldn’t work due to his injuries.
Hiring a lawyer to sue for damages is outside of his budget, he says, adding lawyers told him a civil suit would cost between $50,000 to $300,000.
He says he still suffers from PTSD and that he came out of the “fog” caused by his 2017 concussion in 2021, but still finds himself getting angry or easily frustrated really quickly.
He says he’d like to see a culturally appropriate process of mediation, paid for by health-care authorities, to fix the hospital’s mistake.
“I’d like to see a more consolidated claims process that is actually obtainable for everyday people because clearly the courts are not the proper forum for this,” he says.
José worries Doe will lose continuity of care now that his medical records have been moved to separate unnamed accounts. José can still see some recent visits Doe has made to the hospital under José’s name.
An equally pressing question is how his own care has been impacted over the past several years when his profile was flagged for things he never did.
“I don’t know if it had any impact on the care I’ve received,” José says. “I guess I’ll never know.”
