‘Bombshell’ on cancer audit w as know n by health officials for years

THE ‘bombshell’ that only half of cervical cancer cases were subjected to a routine audit was common knowledge in the HSE for years, it has emerged.

Health Minister Simon Harris stunned the Dáil last week when he revealed that the National Cancer Registry of Ireland (NCRI) was not sharing data with CervicalCheck.

As a result some 1,500 cases were excluded from a review process which is used to establish whether women were the victims of a delayed diagnosis.

Mr Harris was only told of the issue 20 minutes before taking to his feet for a Dáil debate on the scandal which has engulfed the country for the past fortnight.

But it has now emerged that CervicalCheck, which is under the control of the HSE, knew it was not gathering information on all cases.

The lack of communication between the service and the NCRI is being blamed on a “data protection issue” which was quickly resolved after the controversy erupted.

The HSE’s Serious Incident Management Team (SIMT) is still working its way through the 1,500 files to decide whether any of the cancer sufferers were given inaccurate smear test results.

The HSE’s director general Tony O’Brien confirmed there was “knowledge within CervicalCheck that it was not receiving NCRI data”.

“They were aware that the numbers they audited only included those cancers which had been notified to CervicalCheck through its own process which relates to gynaecology clinics and colposcopy clinics,” Mr O’Brien said.

The HSE chief admitted that when the crisis erupted in the wake of Vicky Phelan’s court settlement an “understanding was given” that all cases of cervical cancer were audited.

However, in reality audits were only carried out in 1,482 cases which was less than half the incidences of cervical cancer in Ireland over the past decade.

Pressed by Labour TD Alan Kelly as to how long CervicalCheck would have been aware that it was not auditing all cases, Mr O’Brien replied: “I think they always knew that.”

Mr Harris told the Oireachtas Health Committee yesterday that it was “bizarre” that the two bodies were not sharing information.

“This is the body that knows all about all the types of cancer in this country and the learnings that can be learned from that.

“How we ever got to a situation where one of our cancer screening programmes did not get its data from there, seemed to tell some people that it did get its data from there, and this seems to gone on for years and years and years, is beyond me,” he said.