Retired judge to head N.B. health inquiry

A former Conservative health minister will head an inquiry into the work of a former New Brunswick pathologist and the audit of thousands of biopsies.

Retired judge Paul Creaghan will lead the inquiry, Health Minister Mike Murphy announced on Friday.

The government committed the inquiry after the Miramichi Regional Health Authority announced it would review testing done by a former pathologist from 1995 to 2007.

Creaghan has been a member of the province's Court of Queen's Bench since 1985 and has been a supernumerary judge since 2002. He also served in Richard Hatfield's Conservative government in the 1970s.

Creaghan will decide how much of the inquiry will be held publicly, Murphy said.

"It is expected he will report back to me within six months with his findings as they relate to the former pathologist and how to prevent any recurrence of this situation," he said.

An independent review conducted in December 2007 and January 2008 that examined 227 cases of prostate and breast cancer from 2004-2005 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 this 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 provincial inquiry will review hiring policies, quality assurance programs and performance monitoring at the health authority, said Murphy.

"If there has been some damage done to the confidence in the health-care system, which undoubtedly there has been some, we want to repair it very quickly," he said.

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.

The health authority's medical advisory committee was notified in the spring of 2005 of five complaints against former pathologist Dr. Rajgopal 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.

Menon's licence was suspended by the college and a closer examination of his work was ordered.

Menon served as pathologist for the health authority for the 12-year period that is being examined.