Row over cancer screening accuracy rate

A FIERCE row has broken out over claims that the US medical firm contracted for the national cervical cancer screening programme has a poor accuracy rate compared with its Irish rivals.

Fine Gael health spokesman Dr James Reilly said he had serious concerns about the award of the contract to Quest Diagnostics which will carry out 300,000 cervical smear tests per year.

“Patient safety is paramount here and Irish labs have a 95% accuracy rate. Quest, by comparison, have an 85% accuracy rate and a margin of error of 15%,” he said.

Quest last night said the figures quoted by Dr Reilly were “unfounded” and insisted there was no question about the quality of the service it provided to authorities like the NHS in Britain and Medicare in the US.

However, medical sources said the accuracy rates were based on smear tests outsourced to Quest in 2006 and 2007 by a number of Irish hospitals clearing backlogs in their own labs.

The claims follow therevelation that Quest was previously mired in controversy after it billed US health authorities for unnecessary tests and had to pay out $40 million (€26m) in fraud settlements.

Furious exchanges took place in the Dáil yesterday as Dr Reilly accused Tánaiste Mary Coughlan of stifling debate on the company which beat six other bidders for the multimillion-euro national screening contract.

Dr Reilly said the accuracy rates attributed to Quest might be acceptable in the US where smears were tested annually, but they were not acceptable in Ireland where women would be tested only every three to five years.

“This margin of error means that, at 300,000 tests a year, 30,000 more Irish women will needlessly be recalled or, much worse, may have their diagnosis missed,” he said.

A Quest spokesman defended the company’s standards, saying it conducted 13 million tests worldwide last year and had an excellent international reputation.

“The smear test will be screened twice by two separate cytotechnologists and if found to be positive, is screened a third time by a fully-qualified pathologist and a full report is written up and sent back to the woman’s GP — and all that within 10 days, so the quality and thoroughness and accuracy is very, very high.”

He added that the fraud case in no way related to the quality of the lab work carried out by Quest and had been resolved to the satisfaction of all involved.