ST. JOHN'S, N.L. - The health authority at the centre of a breast cancer testing scandal in Newfoundland and Labrador says it did not live up to the expectations of its patients and is willing to offer them compensation.
Louise Jones of Eastern Health apologized to patients on Thursday, but she wouldn't say how much the authority is willing to pay in compensation to patients who received flawed tests.
"There will be compensation," Jones, the authority's acting chief executive officer, told a news conference that was attended by some patients who are involved in a class-action lawsuit against Eastern Health.
"That is not an issue."
She said the province's largest health authority has already taken steps to improve quality in its laboratory in St. John's, which was the focus of a judicial inquiry report released Tuesday into the botched tests.
"We are sorry we let you down," Jones told patients. "We have learned many lessons."
Jones said the authority it is still coping with staff shortages, and will work with the government to find more funding to address problems found by Justice Margaret Cameron in her report.
"Judge Cameron in her report points out that quality costs money and her recommendations do point to the need for significant investment required in this province to move forward," she said.
Cameron's report said quality control at the St. John's laboratory that processed the tests was "so little and so haphazard as to be non-existent."
She issued 60 recommendations that, among other things, call for more training for clinicians, improved record-keeping and mandatory continuing education for laboratory technologists.
Cameron's report came after a seven-month judicial inquiry heard a litany of blunders that caused at least 386 men and women to receive mistaken results on their breast cancer tests.
The provincial Supreme Court judge also said Eastern Health might have detected problems with its breast cancer tests six years earlier than it did if it delved deeper into one patient's questionable test result in 1999.
In her report, Cameron called on Eastern Health to further investigate whether all patients affected by the botched tests have been contacted.
Jones said the authority is doing an audit to determine whether all patients have been told about flawed tests and whether there are any more patients affected. She said that's expected to be done approximately within the next week.
The tests done at the lab were intended to determine the appropriate treatment for breast cancer.
At least 108 patients whose tests were misread have died in what is the province's biggest public health failure. But it will likely never be known how many of them, if any, died as a result of missing out on potentially life-saving treatment.
Cameron has asked the provincial government to report by March 31, 2010, on the status of her recommendations.
Premier Danny Williams launched the inquiry in 2007 after documents were filed with the provincial Supreme Court as part of the lawsuit against Eastern Health revealed the general extent of the errors. Up to that point, Eastern Health had refused to release that information.
Problems with the testing were detected in the spring of 2005, when doctors began questioning the hormone receptor test results of a patient with invasive lobular carcinoma, a form of breast cancer.
After retesting, it was discovered that the initial test result was wrong, as were those for a small sample of other patients.
Eastern Health subsequently halted testing in its lab and transferred its hormone receptor tests to Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto.
The health board then started a review of all hormone receptor tests from 1997 to 2005.
