THE MAJORITY of a four-year backlog of x-ray reports to be examined at Tallaght Hospital relate to orthopaedic problems, the hospital’s chief executive designate said last night.
Prof Kevin Conlon said some 23,000 x-rays relating to about 14,000 patients were now awaiting review and that most of these were taken when plaster was being applied or when the patients were in an operating theatre.
“Those x-rays would be of relatively low risk,” he said. “But the risk is not zero . . .”
Prof Conlon apologised to the two patients who suffered delayed cancer diagnosis, all patients of Tallaght Hospital and to its staff, for who the development was an “absolutely travesty”.
“We failed,” he said on RTÉs Late Debate. “We failed to provide the type of care I believe is absolutely essential to the patients coming in the door.”
He said he had no idea of the scale of the problem until he took office in December and that the news came as a “shock” and was “totally unacceptable”.
He said he was now wise to the causes of the problem, which were “design flaws” in the software used for retrieving x-ray reports and deficiencies in staff numbers.
“This was not anybody else’s problem. This was Tallaght’s problem and we should have sorted it and are sorting it now.”
He said a root and branch analysis of how it happened was required and pledged that such an issue would not arise in the future.
“It is not going to happen again and we have to make sure the lesson to be learned at Tallaght Hospital can be relayed to other institutions in the State so it does not happen anywhere else.
“I can reassure patients who are coming to Tallaght Hospital tomorrow for an x-ray that those are being reported and that every patient who has had an x-ray since September 2009 has had a radiologists report,” he said.
“It is hospital policy that every x-ray conducted at Tallaght Hospital is reported by a competent consultant radiologist.”
He said the family of the patient who died and the patient undergoing cancer treatment had been informed of the fault yesterday.
Fine Gael’s health spokesman Dr James Reilly said the sheer volume and period of time during which X-rays were not reviewed by a consultant radiologist was “astounding”. “Following on from other delayed diagnoses in recent years citing systemic failures, it is vital that full information on this affair is made available so that life-saving lessons can be learned,” he said.
