The team assembled by the HSE to investigate the non reporting of nearly 58,000 x-rays and the failure to process thousands of GP referral letters at Dublin's Tallaght Hospital began its review today with its first fact finding mission to the hospital.
The chairman of the review team, former independent senator Dr Maurice Hayes, said while the review had been established by the HSE its work would be independent.
He said he had been assured the review group will have total access to the hospitals files, that it can ask whatever questions it wishes and reach whatever conclusions it wants to.
He pointed out that while it will not be a sworn inquiry, with powers to compel witnesses to attend, he had been assured of total co-operation by the hospital's chief executive and chairman.
Furthermore, he stressed it will not be a disciplinary inquiry but he said the inquiry team will report what they see and it would then be a matter for other bodies including professional bodies to take action if action needed to be taken.
The aim of the inquiry, Dr Hayes, said was to find out what went wrong and why and to see if the problems at the hospital arose from systems failures, lack of protocols, a failure to follow protocols that were in place, a lack of resources or a failure to use resources that were there to best effect, or governance issues. They will look to see if what happened was as a result of human error, negligence or systems failures.
The objective was to restore confidence in the hospital, he added, and apply any lessons that were learned across the healthcare system.
Dr Hayes, who will meet with the Tallaght Hospital Action Group later this week, said he hoped to be able to report back to the HSE in about three months with his findings but if in the course of the review any immediate concerns for patient safety are identified, these will be immediately communicated to the hospital, the HSE, and the Health Information and Quality Authority.
The inquiry team's report will be published.
The terms of reference for the inquiry were drawn up by the HSE following meetings with Dr Hayes and were approved by the inquiry team at its first meeting yesterday. They require the team to identify and analyse the circumstances and the factors "clinical, managerial and systematic" that led to the accumulation of a backlog of 57,921 unreported x-rays at the hospital between 2005 and 2009. They also require the team to examine the hospital's response to the backlog when it was identified.
Similarly, they require the inquiry team to analyse the hospital's management and processing of GP referral letters. The hospital has itself said there was a backlog of 3,498 unprocessed letters in the hospital last October. Some of them dated back to 2002.
The inquiry team will also include Patricia Gordon, former chief executive of Belfast's Mater Hospital; Dr Declan Murphy representing GPs, Brian O'Mahony of the Irish Haemophilia Society representing patients; consultant radiologist Dr Risteárd O'Laoide who is dean of the faculty of radiology at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland; and Dr Paul Kavanagh, a consultant in public health medicine with the HSE.