Warning against smear test outsourcing

Senior Irish medical practitioners have warned that early signs of cervical cancer in 1,000 patients could be missed each year…

Senior Irish medical practitioners have warned that early signs of cervical cancer in 1,000 patients could be missed each year if smear test analysis is outsourced to a US company.

Quest Diagnostics won the tender to analyse 300,000 Irish smear tests a year when the national cervical cancer screening programme is expanded shortly.  

However, consultant pathologists from the Coombe Women's Hospital, St James's Hospital and St Luke's hospital in Dublin as well as University College Hospital Galway have claimed that the missed cases would arise because the diagnostic rate of pre-cancerous cells at Quest Diagnostics in the US "is 30 per cent less than that of Irish laboratories".

Mr Tony O'Brien, chief executive of the National Cancer Screening Service (NCSS) which is due to sign a contract next week with Quest Diagnostics, said the claims were based on "a flawed analysis".

He said comparing the results of smears sent to Quest last year, when a backlog was outsourced by the HSE, with the results on smears analysed at home was not comparing like with like because urgent cases, more likely to contain lesions, were dealt with in Irish labs and were no longer available to be outsourced. "So it depresses the likely high grade rates outsourced."

Quest Diagnostics won the tender to analyse 300,000 Irish smear tests a year when the national cervical cancer screening programme is expanded shortly. A contract is due to be signed next week by the NCSS.

Minister for Health Mary Harney said the tender from Quest came in at less than one-third of the cost of any submitted by an Irish laboratory, its services were quality-assured and results would be back in 10 days.

She said the NCSS was informed by Quest before it won the tender that it had paid out millions in fraud settlements after billing for tests which had not been requested. She believed despite this it was appropriate to award Quest the tender.