Legal lingo masks the reality of mealy-mouthed State apologies

ANOTHER week another health service scandal and another set of legal couched apologies. Almost eight years after Fine Gael promised (during the 2011 election campaign) to abolish the HSE, the executive continues to lead the way when it comes to spin, excuses and unaccountability.

Following on the foot of the appalling Cervical Check scandal last week, the Health Service Executive released the findings of its review into misread scans at University Hospital Kerry.

That review – a total look back at over 46,000 x-rays and scan images that had been examined by a locum radiologist who no longer works at the hospital – found that four patients have died after their scans were misread.

The investigation was called for in summer 2017 after three very ill patients were discovered to have cancer only after they came back to the hospital in July and August.

They had received the all-clear weeks earlier.

A further seven patients – some of whom are understood to be terminal – are seriously affected while hundreds of others were called back for repeat scans.

At the press conference to announce the findings of the ‘ look back’ – the HSE’s euphemistic term for what was the largest audit of its kind ever conducted in Ireland – offered up a master-class in careful understatement.

The four patients involved, the press was told, had suffered a ‘ delayed diagnosis’ which ‘regrettably’ had ‘ a negative impact on their clinical course’.

Lets repeat that last bit, ‘a negative impact on their clinical course’.

These people are dead.

Their families are grieving at the loss of loved ones who may still be alive were it not for fatal flaws in our health service.

The HSE’s apparently self serving and face saving terms – which seem carefully couched to avoid taking full legal responsibility – are an insult to the people who lost their lives.

They are also wearyingly familiar after the scandal of Cervical Check where the HSE had sought, desperately, to hide its failings and save its legal skin until women like Vicky Phelan exposed what the executive was trying to do.

There followed a series of mealy-mouthed apologies from the HSE who promised such a thing will never happen again and that it would do all in its power to help those affected.

The Government apologised too. Leo Varadkar was quick to pledge that no other Cervical Check victim would be forced to go back to court for justice.

What happened then? Predictably – within weeks – it emerged that some victims had indeed been forced back to court as the State was batting back their efforts to seek mediation.

In both the Cervical Check and UHK Scan cases, the HSE had also sought to keep the scandals secret from the media, lest the public might learn what is really happening in our dysfunctional health system. So much for accountability.

When it comes to spin the HSE would make you sick.