Dependence on locum consultants blamed for cancer misdiagnosis crisis

A SYSTEM-WIDE dependency on locum consultants who are not staff hospital employees is behind the latest cancer misdiagnosis crisis in the north- east, it has been claimed.

Leaked information from the inquiry, to be published at the end of this month, into more than 6,000 chest X-rays and 70 CT scans in Drogheda and Navan between August 2006 and August 2007 has stated that “hundreds” of mistakes were made by locum radiologist Dr James Murray at the facilities.

The inquiry, launched in May after it emerged that four patients initially given the all-clear were subsequently told they had lung cancer and died, is reputedly also due to confirm nine more patients could be facing the same fate.

Fine Gael health spokes- man Dr James Reilly said the burgeoning crisis is a further indication of the HSE’s inability to run the system effectively.

“What I find so frustrating about this is that they are using locum staff to fill positions that they won’t fill with full-time staff. It’s pretending we have a service, and what this whole sorry case shows yet again is the failure of management to reach appropriate levels of care.

“You can’t just say it’s this one doctor who is at fault and that’s it. They’re too many isolated incidents for them to be unrelated,” said Dr Reilly.

According to leaked information, the final report into the north-east misdiagnosis case will state that hundreds of incorrect readings of X-ray and CT scans took place in Drogheda and Navan in a 12-month period.

While the majority of these misreadings did not result in a serious medical condition going undetected, it is expected to state that nine patients subject to inaccurate readings have since been diagnosed with lung cancer.

The inquiry is also understood to have made a series of recommendations based on the length of time it took for the full review of Dr Murray’s work to begin — despite the HSE being aware of concerns as early as September 2007.

Meanwhile, a senior consultant radiologist who read the chest X-ray performed on the late Ann Moriarty at Ennis General in June 2007 has defended his work. In an email to Health Minister Mary Harney Dr Martin Schranz, now radiology network director in the north-east, said he verbally noted Ms Moriarty’s X-rays were “grossly abnormal”, with a large shadow in the left lung.

Ms Moriarty, 53, died of breast cancer in April within months of being twice told by Ennis hospital that chest X-rays on her did not show cancer.