The Western Health and Social Care Trust (WHSCT) has continued to refuse to answer questions from the Impartial Reporter regarding the timeline of events surrounding a review they are carrying out into the cervical smear tests of 86 women that were incorrectly reported.
This is despite the fact that the Public Health Authority confirmed to this newspaper this week that they were not informed of any variances in the reporting of cervical smear tests by the WHSCT until January 17 of this year, nine months after some of the tests were first carried out.
Of the 86 women affected, 61 are from the WHSCT area. The women were informed by letter last week of the need to get a second cervical smear test. Some of the women have had to wait ten months from their initial test to be informed that it had been incorrectly reported and that possible crucial additional tests were not carried out.
One woman who received a letter has said that despite getting in touch with the helpline provided by the WHSCT that she is “not really any clearer about when things happened and why there was such a delay in informing” her.
“They were helpful. And they have said that the results will be back in a few weeks of my second test. But I still am none the wiser as to what happened, how it happened or when it happened. And I do want to know that. But for now, the thing that is most on my mind is getting the results back for the second test,” she explained.
The review being carried out by the WHSCT is dealing with smear tests that were reported in a pathology lab between April and June 2018.
In their initial statement, issued last week, the WHSCT stated that “standard quality checks are carried out every three months, in line with UK best practice”. These standard quality health checks the Trust said had identified “variances in the reporting of a number of tests”.
When asked by this newspaper if this meant that the variances were identified within three months of June 2018 the WHSCT has refused to be drawn on an exact date. The Impartial Reporter also asked if the WHSCT could tell us when the review was started but it has said it will be making no comment until the review has been concluded.
In its initial statement the WHSCT said that after the standard quality health checks had identified variances it had “immediately set up a review team, alerted the Public Health Agency and Department of Health and initiated the review process”.
However, the Public Health Authority has confirmed that it was not informed of any variances in the reporting of cervical smear tests by the WHSCT until January 17 of this year.
This paper asked the WHSCT a number of questions in an attempt to clarify the apparent discrepancies between the three month standard checks and the fact it took, in some cases, nine months to inform the Public Health Authority and ten months to inform some of the patients affected.
The WHSCT has so far failed to answer our specific questions which were:
When did the standard checks take place on the cervical smear tests that were carried out between April and June 2018? When were the variances in these first detected? When was the review team set up? When did the review begin?