Thread by @PhelanVicky

Here we go again….An angry thread

It is only a few short months since Patricia Carrick, another terminally-ill woman who sued the @HSELive & a lab, MedLab, settled her case for the negligent misreading of her slides. Patricia died weeks later. To add insult to injury, Patricia

…died without the comfort of knowing that the €2.75 million in damages that she was awarded had been paid out to provide for her family. Her solicitor, Cian O’Carroll had to go back to court to fight for Patricia’s settlement to be paid DESPITE the fact that Patricia Carrick

…brought her case solely against the HSE following the Supreme Court ruling in the late Ruth Morrisey’s case which directed that future CervicalCheck cases should be brought SOLELY against the HSE.

What was the HSE’s argument for the delay in paying Patricia’s settlement?

According to the State Claims Agency (SCA), who represent the HSE in ALL cases of medical negligence, they were trying to obtain the damages from MedLab, which was a 3rd party in the case, BEFORE paying the Carrick family.

Even after admitting liability and apologising in court

…here they were, the HSE and the SCA, the arm of the State, STILL fighting a dying woman to her grave!

Today, another very young terminally-ill woman, Lynsey Bennett @littlemiss2018 settled her case against the HSE and a lab, Quest

rte.ie/news/courts/20…

Lynsey’s case was settled with NO admission of liability and NO apology from either the HSE or the lab involved. Indeed the lab, Quest, tried to delay proceedings & had secured a delay until today.

It took all parties until the day the court case was due to be heard to settle!

This has been the case for many of the CervicalCheck cases that have gone before. In the cases that have been heard to date, ALL women have been terminally-ill. One would have to wonder is this a deliberate ploy by defendants in the hope that these women might die in the interim?

If this were to happen, there would be NO case to answer and it would be up to the next-of-kin to take a new case and any settlement that would be awarded would be CONSIDERABLY less than if the woman was still alive….

Think about that for a minute!

No apology was made to Lynsey but a letter from the CEO of the NSS, @fiona_murphy1 was read out in court expressing “deep regret” on behalf of CervicalCheck and hoping that the settlement will give Lynsey and her children “some level of comfort, peace of mind & security.”

We do not know why no apology was made in Lynsey’s case but no apology was made in my case either until a few days after my case settled, nor was there an admission of liability.

Yet, negligence was established in my case and I was awarded a settlement of €2.5 million.

Who are the HSE and the SCA trying to fool by not admitting liability or apologising when such large amounts are being awarded?

I would have far more respect for the HSE if they OWNED their mistakes and ADMITTED liability, particularly with cases that have been heard…

…since the watershed Scally Report by Dr. @GabrielScally who found that the CervicalCheck programme was doomed to fail and that there were serious issues with QA and corporate governance with little to no oversight of the programme.

…AND since the Supreme Court upheld the…

ruling in the Morrissey case and found the HSE to be primarily liable for negligence which might be found against the laboratories that the HSE uses regardless of the fact that cervical screening is carried out by outsourced labs.

Instead, what we are seeing is a deeply disturbing narrative beginning to resurface DESPITE the fact that in ALL cases that have been heard, to date, for failures in cervical screening - negligence has been established & women have been compensated and we will ALL die as a result

And still, women, like me and Lynsey Bennett and Ruth Morrissey - women who have had the audacity to air our dirty laundry in public and deign to sue the CervicalCheck programme, we have not been “wronged by the system. We have simply been unfortunate in not being one of those…

…to have cancer detected early” according to the Director of CervicalCheck @russellnoirin in a letter to TD @Toibin1

According to Fiona Murphy, whose letter was read out at Lynsey Bennett’s settlement hearing, in a conversation with @TodaywithClaire in November last year:

she said that: “We know that 2 in every 1,000 people won’t be detected. And if we end up being sued for all of those, then the benefit that we get from the 18 who are detected might be lost.”

I find this narrative that is beginning to creep back in to be very troubling - this doctor-knows-best school of thought that has NO place in modern society.

In response to Qs about whether the CervicalCheck programme disagrees with the decision of the Supreme Court and

…compensation paid to women, a spokeswoman for CervicalCheck said that “collaboration between patients and screening is key to the future of the programme…and that, through greater understanding, we can increase public trust and confidence in our cancer screening programmes.”

In order to increase trust & confidence, it is incumbent on those involved in cervical screening, at every level, from the top to the bottom:
- to acknowledge that harm was done
- to accept that the programme DID fail women, and
- to engage meaningfully with patient advocates