HSE knew CervicalCheck was considering not telling some women - Phelan solicitor

Health Service Executive (HSE) memos show the organisation was aware in 2016 that CervicalCheck was considering not telling patients about misread smear tests, the solicitor for the woman who exposed the scandal has said.

Cian O'Carroll, the Co Tipperary-based solicitor who represented terminally ill Limerick woman Vicky Phelan in her recent High Court case, said that the memos show that the National Screening Service (NSS) had told the HSE that not all women were going to be informed about audits showing revised test results.

He referred to the March 2016 memo telling the HSE that there would be an increased risk of patients contacting the media about missed cancer detections “if/when shared by their attending clinician.”

“It is very clear from the memo that CervicalCheck were still only contemplating telling the women and that it was only a possibility that they would be told - ‘if and when’ patients are informed,” said Mr O’Carroll.

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He noted that in July 2016 CervicalCheck produced a document that was circulated to clinicians “which clearly envisaged that not all patients were to be told and that only 30 per cent of patients were told up until two weeks ago,” around the time that Ms Phelan’s case results in the scale of non-disclosure emerged.

The memos show the HSE did not view the missed tests and the failure to disclose them to the women as "a patient safety concern," said Mr O'Carroll. This was in line with guidance given to Minister for Health Simon Harris in a briefing note on the Phelan trial from his officials before the issue came to light, he said.

“They show they were contemplating this as a risk management exercise, not a patient safety exercise, which is contemptuous,” said Mr O’Carroll.

He believes that the documents raise a more concerning issue: the failure to ask why there had been a significant misreading of smear tests by the US laboratories to which the HSE had outsourced the national screening programme, and the failure to investigate why mistakes had been made and the risks posed by that.

“It is absolutely clear from these memos that Cervical Check did not have an interest in investigating those risks and if they weren’t going to investigate them, they couldn’t prevent further mistakes from happening,” said Mr O’Carroll.

“I think that makes them culpable in any subsequent mistakes that did arise.”