SA Pathology bungle: Clinic inundated as fears patients given false hope

A DOCTOR who revealed about 100 men had wrongly been diagnosed with prostate cancer has been “inundated” with calls from patients, fearing some have false hopes of being cleared.

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A LEADING doctor who blew the whistle and revealed that about 100 men had wrongly been diagnosed with prostate cancer has been “inundated” with calls from patients who suspect they were affected, and he fears some have built up false hope of being cleared.

Urologist Peter Sutherland went public in the Sunday Mailafter alerting SA Pathology to an unusually high number of false positive results, which the organisation had kept secret.

Urologist Dr Peter Sutherland.

Returning to work on Monday, Dr Sutherland said the phone had been running off the hook and it was “completely crazy” the concerns were not passed on to Health Minister Jack Snelling.

“We’ve been inundated by phone calls,” Dr Sutherland told The Advertiser.

“They just all want to make sure that they’re not one of the mistaken values.”

He said it was a “potential outcome” that some men would falsely hope they had been wrongly diagnosed and, while he was unaware of any cases, “it is conceivable and possible that in the last three to four months some patients ... could have been referred for (unnecessary) treatment”.

Former SA Pathology boss Ken Barr.

Health minister Jack Snelling.

Meanwhile, Mr Snelling said faulty testing kits from a private company were believed to be the cause of false prostate cancer diagnoses, and more heads could roll over the scandal.

On Sunday, Pathology SA executive director Ken Barr was sacked.

Mr Snelling said he was enraged by the “cover-up”.

“If we find further cases of people not being upfront with the people of SA and not providing me with the information I need to do my job effectively, yes heads will roll,” he said.

“When mistakes are made, what I expect is for people to be accountable for them and for people to be forthright so that we can provide assurances ... about the quality of our health system.”

Mr Snelling rejected suggestions there should be a judicial inquiry into the entire department, saying the failings had been isolated to a relatively small number of people.

It has emerged that Mr Barr told staff in an internal memo on February 16 that he had decided to leave SA anyway when his contract expired on July 23.

The memo states the decision came following a meeting with a senior staff member in charge of Statewide Clinical Support Services.

The decision came about the time doctors sounded the alarm on dodgy testing within the department and after an SA Pathology scandal over hidden cameras recording staff.

Opposition health spokesman Stephen Wade said “a broad-ranging judicial inquiry into the whole of SA Health” must be called following “a series of profound failures of practice and policy”.

“Nothing short of a full judicial inquiry into this latest prostate cancer bungle, the chemotherapy dosage scandal and the breach of patient records will be satisfactory,” he said.

“It’s no longer credible for Mr Snelling to tell us he is angry about yet another failure.

“Each of these gross breaches of quality health care must be forensically examined to shine a light on how SA Health should be reformed to stop similar breaches in the future.”