THE HEALTH Service Executive (HSE) has established a review by external experts into the delayed diagnosis of cancer patients in the northeast, Minister for Health Mary Harney told the Dáil.
She confirmed that the HSE had issued letters to almost 4,600 patients advising them that chest X-rays and CT scans from 2006 and 2007 were to be reviewed.
"The HSE has emphasised in its letters to patients and others that the review is for precautionary reasons," she said.
Ms Harney said that the review arose from concerns raised about the practice of a locum radiologist. In late 2007, it had come to the attention of the HSE that a small number of patients in Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital, Drogheda, and Our Lady's Hospital, Navan, during 2006 and 2007, had their diagnosis delayed due to an abnormality on their chest X-ray not being noted in initial examination by the radiologist.
The patients, through follow-up X-rays, were subsequently diagnosed with lung cancer, and they all died.
The HSE review into those four cases would be led by Prof Muiris Fitzgerald, respiratory consultant, and would allow the HSE to establish whether there was a clinical significance to the delayed diagnosis.
Ms Harney was replying to a series of special notice questions from Fergus O'Dowd, FG, Louth, Seymour Crawford, FG, Cavan-Monaghan and Joanna Tuffy, Dublin Mid-West.
Mr O'Dowd said that seven years ago, the department was advised that there was a need for permanent appointments in the radiology department, but the Minister did not make them.
Claiming that finance was an issue, he said that Our Lady of Lourdes hospital was €7 million over budget in September 2007, while Louth County Hospital was €1.7 million over budget.
He added that last August, the Minister had received a letter from Finbar Lennon, a senior consultant working at Our Lady of Lourdes hospital, in which he stated that he was deeply concerned that the situation was unsafe in the northeast.
He had called, said Mr O'Dowd, for a fundamental reappraisal of the current strategy being pursued by management.
"Is it not a fact the Minister has failed absolutely, totally and abjectly in her duty of care to patient safety ?" said Mr O'Dowd.
Ms Harney said that she totally rejected the political charges made by Mr O'Dowd.
"The fact that a hospital goes over budget does not mean it is underfunded," she added.
Ms Harney said that there was a fragmentation of services, but that the range of expertise Mr O'Dowd was claiming should be available in five hospitals serving a population of under 400,000 people in the northeast was not achievable.That was what the reform agenda was about.
"First, facilities in Cavan and Louth will be strengthened. Half of all surgical patients and one-third of medical patients in the deputy's region attend Dublin hospitals," said Ms Harney.
Mr O'Dowd claimed that the Minister did not look after them in the northeast.
Earlier, Tánaiste Mary Coughlan said that the Government had not yet considered the HSE's redundancy proposals.
Labour leader Eamon Gilmore asked Ms Coughlan, who was taking the Order of Business, to confirm the report which appeared in The Irish Times about HSE plans for reorganisation.
Fine Gael deputy leader Richard Bruton said that the Government had recognised the HSE was suffering because of the failure to undertake administrative restructuring before it was established.
The Government was afraid one of its pet projects, namely decentralisation, might be affected, he added.
