CervicalCheck controversy

boombang

emo72 wrote: »

is it not that someone resigned (10 years ago?) warning that doing the checks in the usa every year where not as good as the detailed ones done in ireland because we had a "deeper" check?

This one as has been addressed already. Look back though previous posts.

knipex

Matt Barrett wrote: »

More jumping the gun, no? Her flaw here is expecting answers and consequences.

No her flaw here is demanding individuals begin sacked before any questions are asked or answered.

Investigate, find answers and then apportion blame.

Mary Lou's solution is shout, shoot and then investigate.

boombang

Mr.H wrote: »

The HSE memos released today were telling employees to not notify patients that they were misdiagnosed. They stopped the release of valuable information so they could "lawyer up". That is a conspiracy. That is a crime. The person who made that call is responsible. The person who is in charge is responsible. The people who knew about this information and kept it quiet are responsible.

You keep asking what conspiracy. My question is do you even know anything about what happened or did you stumble in here thinking we were talking about something completely different?

How can anyone with any bit of a mind even think the words "what conspiracy"?"

I think you seem to be under the impression that others are that holding back information on previous errors would have helped women's chances. The information was held back, but only at a time when it was too late to be of benefit. They never had evidence of errors at a point when it would have been helpful.

If you don't understand that point you need to read some of the previous points and news coverage again carefully.

I concede that a conscious decision to withhold information from women wasn't a good course of action, but ironically the motivation seems to totally vindicated. They were worried that women would go to the media in a was way that unnecessarily damaged public confidence in the screening programme. This is what happened. The media failed to convey a balanced account of the fallibility of screening, many people believe that women were knowingly left to die and the whole thing blew up.

knipex

glenfieldman wrote: »

He resigned, afaik, if you leave your job your not entitled to a pension

Well your wrong.

Uriel.

Mr.H wrote: »

The HSE memos released today were telling employees to not notify patients that they were misdiagnosed. They stopped the release of valuable information so they could "lawyer up". That is a conspiracy. That is a crime. The person who made that call is responsible. The person who is in charge is responsible. The people who knew about this information and kept it quiet are responsible.

You keep asking what conspiracy. My question is do you even know anything about what happened or did you stumble in here thinking we were talking about something completely different?

How can anyone with any bit of a mind even think the words "what conspiracy"?"

You know that the information you are talking about was developed after the women in question were diagnosed and where relevant were in treatment, right?

I don't think the Memos provide evidence that people were told to withhold information. The March memo appears to me to be talking about legal issues that have arisen with a laboratory regarding the publication of information on the audit reports. The update memo suggests that these issues were being dealt with in the interim and once dealt with the July memo seems to be briefing on the communications protocol that was being put in place. Obviously we know that that protocol failed or wasn't carried through and this is a significant failing that needs to be addressed and hopefully the inquiry /review will get to the bottom of that.

However I don't see the conspiracy to cover up and I don't see any evidence of criminality.

listermint

boombang wrote: »

I think you seem to be under the impression that others are that holding back information on previous errors would have helped women's chances. The information was held back, but only at a time when it was too late to be of benefit. They never had evidence of errors at a point when it would have been helpful.

If you don't understand that point you need to read some of the previous points and news coverage again carefully.

I concede that a conscious decision to withhold information from women wasn't a good course of action, but ironically the motivation seems to totally vindicated. They were worried that women would go to the media in a was way that unnecessarily damaged public confidence in the screening programme. This is what happened. The media failed to convey a balanced account of the fallibility of screening, many people believe that women were knowingly left to die and the whole thing blew up.

Im sorry, but that is complete codswallop. That sort of language might fly in on RTE News + but we all know the reason the information was held back.


Litigation!

It was nothing whatsoever to do with confidence in the screening system. If you think you can contort yourself into shapes to try get that message out then im concerned about your connection to the HSE. Because it has been page after page of putting a slant on this whole episode with scant all concern for the parties involved.


Litigation - Avoiding Litigation and insuring that a large claim was not levied against the HSE or their contractors.

Amirani

The reaction to this whole situation is despairing and almost vindicates a policy of not having widespread releases of smear test audits. The public outrage - including claims that the Government should resign "because smear tests were read wrong" is complete ill-informed nonsense. It's been massively damaging to the very successful Cervical Check scheme, that has itself reduced deaths from cervical cancer by at least 7% since it was introduced.

Confidence in this scheme is now shot, and this public outrage is without doubt going to lead to worse health outcomes than better for women. What makes this even worse is that some of the people shouting loudest on this are some of the same people that most vehemently opposed the introduction of the HPV vaccine.

Chips Lovell

Have changed the thread title since the discussion has since broadened out to discussion of the entire controversy.

knipex

Mr.H wrote: »

Surely there is some sort of law that covers conspiracy, and the death and potential deaths of others because of non actions?

Someone definitely deserves jail time because of this. Whoever wrote the memo ordering that women shouldnt be told, is a prime candidate for that.

There is definitely a couple that should go down hard for this because a lot of women were given death sentences to save jobs for the lads.

No one ordered anyone not to tell the women.

No one was given a death sentence to save jobs..

You seem to have a complete misunderstanding of what actually happened.

boombang

listermint wrote: »

Im sorry, but that is complete codswallop. That sort of language might fly in on RTE News + but we all know the reason the information was held back.


Litigation!

It was nothing whatsoever to do with confidence in the screening system. If you think you can contort yourself into shapes to try get that message out then im concerned about your connection to the HSE. Because it has been page after page of putting a slant on this whole episode with scant all concern for the parties involved.


Litigation - Avoiding Litigation and insuring that a large claim was not levied against the HSE or their contractors.

The might also have been concerned about litigation costs to the state too, sure.

For the record, I don't work for the HSE. I work for a university in research into cancer prevention. I have indeed been arguing firmly for more benign view of CervicalCheck, the HSE and TOB, but only because I believe that to be much closer to the truth than what much of the media has put out or what people have put in this thread. I do try to keep an open mind on all of the issues.

Edward M

knipex wrote: »

No one ordered anyone not to tell the women.

No one was given a death sentence to save jobs..

You seem to have a complete misunderstanding of what actually happened.

Well my take on it is that a cover up took place, another one for govt services, and a couple or more women are dying because of it.
Two years it seems these concerns have been hidden and the women concerned not contacted or told about it, is that a proper understanding or am I misguided too?

Amirani

Edward M wrote: »

Well my take on it is that a cover up took place, another one for govt services, and a couple or more women are dying because of it.
Two years it seems these concerns have been hidden and the women concerned not contacted or told about it, is that a proper understanding or am I misguided too?

This is false, nobody is dying because audit results were not passed on. How are people still trotting out this line after all the media coverage?

knipex

Edward M wrote: »

Well my take on it is that a cover up took place, another one for govt services, and a couple or more women are dying because of it.
Two years it seems these concerns have been hidden and the women concerned not contacted or told about it, is that a proper understanding or am I misguided too?

1st I never commented on what you posted.

2nd I never said anyone was misguided, simply based on what they were stating as fact I said they were misinformed.

thirdly there are two issues here.

1 false negatives
2 non disclosure when these false negatives where discovered.

I could be wrong as I haven not seen or read the data directly, just via media and comments made but my understanding is (and I stand open to correction) that none ones diagnosis or treatment was delayed due to non disclosure.

The issue of the false negatives is a separate (although one leads to the other) issue.

I don't have the full details so an loath to make a comment but what I do know is that.

False positives and false negatives are a nature of any screening process. It is not a diagnostic tool, its a screening tool that will capture the vast majority of cases. It is not 100% accurate and no screening process ever will be.

False negatives and false positives happen in all screening processes. I am not 100% sure at to what triggered the audit or if there was a high incidence of false positives than would be expected so I don't want tot comment on that.

Gooser14

knipex wrote:

False negatives and false positives happen in all screening processes. I am not 100% sure at to what triggered the audit or if there was a high incidence of false positives than would be expected so I don't want tot comment on that.

The audit was triggered because women were being diagnosed with cervical cancer when their smear test results had reported no abnormalities.

Edward M

OK, I get the point, these women had their cancer diagnosed later than should have been because of the bad tests, but it was too late anyway for them anyway when the audit found the mistakes.
My bad, I was inferring that they could have been saved if the audit results had been made public earlier and I accept that is not the case.
The audit results and their cover up till now wouldn't have helped these women anyway.
This still leaves a sour taste in my mouth though, its still a cover up of incompetence and a selfish face saving exercise and its of little comfort to anybody that protection of the system above the patients involved.
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/it-hurts-husband-of-cancer-victim-shocked-at-2016-memos-1.3491656?mode=amp

Mr.Micro

2Scoops wrote: »

You said reading a smear is easy and that not every cell is looked at. I'm saying that's wrong. I'm getting my info from the fact that I have read smears professionally.

So how long did you take to read one slide.

Amirani

Edward M wrote: »

OK, I get the point, these women had their cancer diagnosed later than should have been because of the bad tests, but it was too late anyway for them anyway when the audit found the mistakes.
My bad, I was inferring that they could have been saved if the audit results had been made public earlier and I accept that is not the case.
The audit results and their cover up till now wouldn't have helped these women anyway.
This still leaves a sour taste in my mouth though, its still a cover up of incompetence and a selfish face saving exercise and its of little comfort to anybody that protection of the system above the patients involved.
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/it-hurts-husband-of-cancer-victim-shocked-at-2016-memos-1.3491656?mode=amp

Yep, that's exactly it. Fair play to you on the above post clarifying the understanding - many other posters before you haven't done this.

As you point out, there is still a sour taste in the mouth over this, I agree. There is a culture of cover up around this and probably face-saving from people in the HSE. This cover-up may have been for a variety of reasons; but it is this that needs to be criticised and focused on. Many in the media and the likes of Mary Lou McDonald are being completely disingenuous suggesting that the actions of those in the HSE have caused the deaths of women, and this is what's causing confusion and causing people to throw accusations of "attempted murder" around.

I think the way forward on this is probably to full open disclosure, regardless of consequences. Patients should receive all information on their case, even if this results in litigation or undermines the system.

boombang

Edward M wrote: »

This still leaves a sour taste in my mouth though, its still a cover up of incompetence and a selfish face saving exercise and its of little comfort to anybody that protection of the system above the patients involved.
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/it-hurts-husband-of-cancer-victim-shocked-at-2016-memos-1.3491656?mode=amp

This can be read different ways. I take the benign view that they were trying to protect the reputation of the programme from a scandal that would compromise women's attendance, which would be for the good of population health.

It could certainly have been to save the HSE litigation costs, which I still feel is somewhat legit if the payouts are just for routine screen failures rather than demonstrated negligence. I would see payouts as being justified in the latter case.

I could simply be system civil servant and political ass-covering. Which isn't justified of course. My sense is that the other two dominate.

Most worrying would be if there is inadequate performance of the US lab and they don't want that coming to light. That would be a huge story. I think we need to see the numbers (interpreted by an appropriate expert) to get the answer to that one. I'm hoping that the review will be clear and definitive on that.

boombang

Amirani wrote: »

Many in the media and the likes of Mary Lou McDonald are being completely disingenuous suggesting that the actions of those in the HSE have caused the deaths of women, and this is what's causing confusion and causing people to throw accusations of "attempted murder" around.

I've listened to Mary Lou carefully on this. She's not stupid. I'm pretty sure she knows exactly what she's doing here. Total disgrace.

Mr.H

Uriel. wrote:

I don't think the Memos provide evidence that people were told to withhold information. The March memo appears to me to be talking about legal issues that have arisen with a laboratory regarding the publication of information on the audit reports. The update memo suggests that these issues were being dealt with in the interim and once dealt with the July memo seems to be briefing on the communications protocol that was being put in place. Obviously we know that that protocol failed or wasn't carried through and this is a significant failing that needs to be addressed and hopefully the inquiry /review will get to the bottom of that.

So you don't think the information was held back to ensure they were ready for a legal battle? You honestly believe they held back the information for the good of other women so they wouldn't lose confidence in the smear test?

You know that's rubbish yea?

They held back the info because there is liability. Someone made a huge mess up. While the memos are not years old the information is. They already talked about the fact that some people knew about some of the false negatives in 2012. That is 6 years where some women could have been retested FFS.

Holding information regarding someone's health and potential death is a very serious issue. Leaving someone die because if that information is a crime and at least a violation of certain oaths.

Mr.H

knipex wrote:

No one ordered anyone not to tell the women.

So why were women not told? Someone made that call.

knipex wrote:

No one was given a death sentence to save jobs..

Really? So holding back information in 2012 that could have at least informed women they might need to be retested, was nothing to do with people not losing their jobs because of incompetence?

knipex wrote:

You seem to have a complete misunderstanding of what actually happened.

You seem to just be an apologist and think no-one should pay for this.

boombang

Mr.H wrote: »

Holding information regarding someone's health and potential death is a very serious issue. Leaving someone die because if that information is a crime and at least a violation of certain oaths.

I don't like to get unpleasant, but some of the posters here are like reading Ken M.

You've got go back and look at the story again. You're not getting that non-disclosure (justified or not) did not compromise care. Stay with it. Read it again until you get it.

Mr.H

Amirani wrote:

This is false, nobody is dying because audit results were not passed on. How are people still trotting out this line after all the media coverage?

Really? Because I can tell you that yes people are dead because of this. Not just dying. Dead.

When you are diagnosed with cancer it is vital you start treatment as soon as possible. Not three or four years later.

People were misdiagnosed. The people uncharged knew about this and chose to say nothing. Instead they protected the contract they had. Because of this women who had cancer thought they where healthy until their next smear test three years later. If they were receiving treatment during those three years they would have had a better chance at beating it and surviving.

Instead people died.

Amirani

Mr.H wrote: »

So why were women not told? Someone made that call.

This was delegated to doctors to decide on a case-by-case basis. It was felt that in some cases it may have a negative impact on the patient to provide this information, with no real benefit - they were already receiving treatment.

Mr.H wrote: »

Really? So holding back information in 2012 that could have at least informed women they might need to be retested, was nothing to do with people not losing their jobs because of incompetence?

There was no information held back in 2012 that could've informed women that they might need to be retested. The only information available then was the likely false negative rate of the testing. This has not changed and is similar to international norms.

Mr.H

boombang wrote:

I don't like to get unpleasant, but some of the posters here are like reading Ken M.

Yea good job. You might as well be saying "I don't wanna be rude but our stupid". Don't worry I don't get offended easily lol.

boombang wrote:

You've got go back and look at the story again. You're not getting that non-disclosure (justified or not) did not compromise care. Stay with it. Read it again until you get it.

The Vicky phelan case for example. In 2014 she was informed that after reviews there could have been an issue with her results. She went for a second smear test that year. In 2016 her doctor was informed of her results. She had cancer. She herself was not told for another year..... so she could have received treatment all that time but for some reason a doctor she trusted withheld her diagnosis for over a year!!!!

Maybe you should read it again?

mikep

I think what is getting lost in the finger pointing and calls for a head, instigated in the main by Mary Lou, is the call for true reform of the HSE, and in fact all public services as the behaviour in the Gardai being exposed in the disclosures tribunal shows the disdain for standards and accountability is rife and widespread.

boombang

Mr.H wrote: »

Yea good job. You might as well be saying "I don't wanna be rude but our stupid". Don't worry I don't get offended easily lol.



The Vicky phelan case for example. In 2014 she was informed that after reviews there could have been an issue with her results. She went for a second smear test that year. In 2016 her doctor was informed of her results. She had cancer. She herself was not told for another year..... so she could have received treatment all that time but for some reason a doctor she trusted withheld her diagnosis for over a year!!!!

Maybe you should read it again?

Vicky Phelan was diagnosed in 2014 and knew of her diagnosis in 2014.

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/crime-and-law/courts/high-court/woman-with-terminal-cancer-gets-2-5m-high-court-settlement-1.3473814

Your comments read like Ken M because I honestly can't tell if I'm being trolled or not going around in circles explaining it again and again.

Mr.H

Amirani wrote:

There was no information held back in 2012 that could've informed women that they might need to be retested. The only information available then was the likely false negative rate of the testing. This has not changed and is similar to international norms.

Read the other post I just put up regarding the timeline of Vicky phelans case. She was given her retest in 2014 and only got her results last year.

It is claimed by the powers that be Vicky phelan was one of eleven women in the same position. They all needed a retest. Vicky and three others were informed. Seven were not! It now turns out that the figure is actually 200+.

Memos show in 2016 that the HSE knew cervical check was considering it telling women about misdiagnosed.

Hse knew that only 30% of women were being considered to be told. The hse didn't care about helping women but instead wanted to cover their own ass

Mr.H

boombang wrote:

Vicky Phelan was diagnosed in 2014 and knew of her diagnosis in 2014.

She did not know of the results of the review until 2017.

Even some of the women now still haven't been contacted.

Absolute nonsense that you think there isn't any wrong doing here

tretorn

Mr.H wrote: »

Yea good job. You might as well be saying "I don't wanna be rude but our stupid". Don't worry I don't get offended easily lol.



The Vicky phelan case for example. In 2014 she was informed that after reviews there could have been an issue with her results. She went for a second smear test that year. In 2016 her doctor was informed of her results. She had cancer. She herself was not told for another year..... so she could have received treatment all that time but for some reason a doctor she trusted withheld her diagnosis for over a year!!!!

Maybe you should read it again?

I think this is incorrect.

My understanding is Vicky Phelan was diagnosed with cancer in 2014.

She was worried about bleeding and she went to her own doctor and investigations revealed she had cancer. No one in the HSE or cervicalcheck was aware she had cancer so people should check their facts before adding to hysteria. Her treatment for cancer began in 2014, it began immediately after cancer was diagnosed.

While her treatment commenced her previous smear test was re examined to see if cancerous changes were missed. it was discovered they were.Every time a woman is diagnosed with cervicalcancer an audit is done of her previous smear tests, I listened to an interview with the ex head of cervicalcheck and she explained how the programme operated.

For some reason Ms Phelan wasnt informed the original smear test was read incorrectly. I think it was probably to do with the media getting hold of this and blowing it up out of all proportion. This is exactly what happened and now thousands of women are demanding free rechecks even though they are probably not at any risk of cancer at all. Its more likely that errors in reading tests will occur if hundreds of women are being retested unnecessarily andthis means more women will get the all clear incorrectly and then subsequently develop cancer.

Mark Mc Sharry who went ballistic in the Dail yesterday made an absolute fool of himself.

The politicans had the power to make disclosure mandatory but they caved in and agreed to make it voluntary.

How is any consultant supposed to do their job if they are constantly afraid of being sued by people who think they know better than them.