A FORMER patient of Barringtons' private hospital in Limerick whose breast cancer diagnosis was delayed for 18 months, has sharply criticised the Department of Health for failing to act for years on concerns raised about the standard of breast cancer services at the hospital.
The 51-year-old Tipperary woman, who wishes to remain anonymous, said yesterday she had seen a letter which indicated the Department of Health had been informed in June 2005 that it could not be used by BreastCheck, the national breast cancer screening programme, for "quality assurance" reasons.
"So clearly there were concerns in the Minister's department and these were also clearly known to Barringtons' Hospital but nobody thought to tell me or the other women who were left in the dark, month after month, year after year until last year, when my consultant medical oncologist Prof Rajnish Gupta sent my case and many others to HIQA [ Health Information and Quality Authority] having had his concerns about the poor quality of breast cancer care at Barringtons ignored by the Department of Health and Children for years," she said.
It was only after Prof Gupta raised concerns about the way 10 breast cancer patients, including the Tipperary woman, were treated at Barringtons in August 2007 that the Department of Health asked Barringtons to stop treating breast cancer patients.
The department has repeatedly claimed it had no specific information until then to act on.
The manager of Barringtons' Hospital, Denis Cahalane, is out of the country and was unavailable for comment last night.
An independent review of care provided to breast cancer patients at Barringtons between September 2003 and August 2007 found evidence of inappropriate clinical care being given to more than half of the 285 women whose records were reviewed.
It also found two of the women whose cases were reviewed had experienced a delayed breast cancer diagnosis which may have caused harm. One of these was the Tipperary woman.
The woman was referred by her GP to Dr Paul O'Byrne, a surgeon at Barringtons, when she found a lump on her breast in September 2005. She was given the impression she had cancer but a biopsy taken and sent to University College Hospital Galway (UCHG) for analysis was incorrectly reported as benign. Then in June 2006 she returned for another mammogram at Barringtons. It was wrongly interpreted and she was given the all-clear.
In March 2007 she returned to Dr O'Byrne. Another biopsy was taken and sent to UCHG and it was again wrongly reported as benign. This time Dr O'Byrne did not accept the result, he took another biopsy, sent it to Cork for analysis and she was finally diagnosed.
The Medical Council recently decided Dr O'Byrne had no case to answer after reviewing his involvement in the 10 cases about which Prof Gupta raised concerns.