N.B. health inquiry will be public, judge says

The N.B. judge who will lead an inquiry into the audit of thousands of biopsies in eastern New Brunswick said Tuesday that the hearings will take place in public.

Justice Paul Creaghan, a former Conservative health minister and a supernumerary judge with Court of Queen's Bench, was appointed on Feb. 22 to head the inquiry into the work of a former pathologist in the Miramichi area.

An independent review examined 227 cases of prostate and breast cancer from 2004-2005 and found that 18 per cent of the cases had incomplete results and three per cent were misdiagnosed.

The Miramichi Regional Health Authority originally announced it would audit 15,000 biopsies conducted at the Miramichi hospital in eastern New Brunswick between 1995 and 2007. That number was expanded last week to more than 23,700 patients.

The audit of the biopsies will also include about 100 carried out at the Regional Health Authority 4 in Edmundston in 2002.

The inquiry will also look at how the local medical advisory committee and the College of Physicians and Surgeons of New Brunswick dealt with complaints against a doctor.

Dr. Rajgopal Menon was suspended last year.

The health authority's medical advisory committee was notified in the spring of 2005 of five complaints against Menon dating back to 1998. But it was not until another doctor at the hospital filed a complaint in January 2007 that the college took action.

Creaghan said Tuesday he wants to give people in the Miramichi area the chance to speak to his commission or provide written submissions to the inquiry. He said the commission will take place entirely in public, unless people choose to testify in private about their medical conditions.

Creaghan told reporters Tuesday that he would next comment about the inquiry after he submitted his final report in about six months.