Inquiry Probes Whether Health Agency, Fearing Lawsuits, Kept Quiet about Faulty Tests
Mar 31st, 2008 • Posted in: NewsProbe focuses on internal memos, emails, and meeting minutes
ST. JOHN’S, Newfoundland, Canada
A lawyer for plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit against a Canadian health-care agency claims that managers worried more about being sued for faulty cancer tests than about the ethics of informing patients.
The CBC reports that Ches Crosbie, the lead lawyer in a case involving Eastern Health, a government-run health conglomerate formed in 2005 from the merger of seven other health organizations, charged last week that Eastern delayed advising patients that their tests were flawed.
Internal communication showed “input from people in communications, input from lawyers, insurance companies,” Crosbie claimed, adding “What about ethics?”
“This was primarily an ethics issue,” Crosbie said, claming that a director of ethics did not become involved in the issue for another year, according to the CBC.
A public inquiry in St. John’s, Newfoundland, is examining the circumstances behind inaccurate test results given to 383 breast cancer patients and whether authorities at Eastern Health responded appropriately, reports the Toronto Star.
At issue are claims that Eastern Health knew there were problems with test results from a lab at an affiliated hospital as far back as 2003 but did not pursue the issue until a weekly newspaper published a story in 2005, according to reports from the Star and the Globe & Mail.
The Globe & Mail reports that notes, emails, and meeting minutes were entered as evidence in the inquiry. One email was from a lawyer advising the board of the lab company not to send a letter informing patients that their cancer tests were being reexamined by Mount Sinai hospital in Toronto, reports the paper.
“There is a possibility that we could be sued in a class action by those people who receive this proposed correspondence whose test results do not change,” attorney Daniel Boone wrote in an email to Eastern Health’s risk-management consultant, according to the Globe & Mail report. “Otherwise these people would not have a cause of action, so sending the letter actually exposes us to a liability which does not now exist…. I do not see how the letter advances the health care of the affected patients, and it increases our exposure to claims for damages. I would recommend against sending it.”
The National Post reports that the inquiry also is attempting to assess whether Eastern’s chairwoman was properly informed of the testing problems.
The tests in question were designed to determine the proper course of treatment for women already diagnosed with cancer.
Sources: Toronto Star, Mar. 29 — CBC, Mar. 28 — Globe & Mail, Mar. 28 — National Post, Mar. 28.
For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Mar. 17 — Related Newsline story, Mar. 10 — Related Newsline story, Mar. 10 — Related Newsline story, Mar. 3 — Related Newsline story, Feb. 11.
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