Beer wanted the deadline for suspected breast cancer specimens to be doubled to 10 days, the turnaround time expected for other cancer diagnoses. His request seemed reasonable. Yet the report concludes the current time-frame is appropriate given the importance for women to have certainty as early as possible. But it is surely better for women to wait a little longer for that certainty, rather than be subject to an approach that, while quicker, has a much higher risk of flawed diagnosis. Further, the panel's recommendations for preventing more faulty results are not utterly compelling. In the long term, it envisages the potential for human error being reduced by automated technology. In the meantime, it suggests that, where possible, only one specimen should be handled at a time. But the effectiveness of this will depend on the pressures on a workforce that may be spread too thinly in too many cases.
The panel also found that most of the women had been treated disrespectfully in the aftermath of their horrific experiences. One had not received an apology and others were told of the mistake over the phone "quite some time later". The report says there should be prompt acknowledgment of an error, full disclosure of all information to the women, and opportunities to discuss this with qualified staff. It is a severe indictment that this even needs to be said. Immediate and full disclosure and appropriate support should have been the automatic response to the women's plight.
Their misfortune did not end there. At least some of the women who sought support from the ACC were treated unsympathetically. "Their experience to date is that the process for consideration and decision-making has been difficult for them," the panel notes. The ACC should, it says, review and improve its policies on lump sum compensation for such patients, as well as its processes for responding to such claims.
Clearly, much work awaits the new board charged with overseeing a culture change at the ACC. Equally, much needs to be done to restore women's faith in the breast cancer screening system. The panel's report takes a relatively benign approach to neutralising the problems. More will be needed if the botch-ups continue.