Four-week wait for smear test results

FOUR weeks is now the average length of time it takes to process cervical smear tests since the Health Service Executive (HSE) started using a laboratory in the United States to clear a backlog earlier this year.

In January, the assistant national director of the HSE’s National Hospital Office Tom Finn, described the decision to send cervical smears to the US as “an appropriate solution to an unacceptable problem”.

When the move was made to clear a backlog of tens of thousands of cervical smears, the average time for a test to be analysed was four months. However, some women were having to wait up to nine months for a test result.