Outsourcing scans puts patients at risk

TALLAGHT Hospital continues to outsource radiology scans two years after a consultant neurologist warned the practise could lead to a missed diagnosis.

In October 2006, Dr Raymond Murphy wrote to his consultant radiologist colleague, Dr Sam Hamilton, saying some scans were arriving on his desk with no patient names and with no indication of where the scans had come from.

“The whole process is completely medical-legally a minefield because these scans are going to get lost, going to be misinterpreted and it is wrong. We should be improving our own hospital radiology rather than outsourcing,” Dr Murphy wrote in a letter obtained by the Irish Examiner under the Freedom of Information Act.