Can't recall flagging cancer test pitfalls with minister: official

A senior Newfoundland and Labrador government official has told an inquiry that she believed cancer testing information from Eastern Health could not be trusted, but cannot recall whether she alerted her superiors.

Moira Hennessey, an assistant deputy minister in the Department of Health and Community Services, said that she had figured out that the error rate of hormone receptor testing at a St. John's lab was significantly higher than Eastern Health publicly disclosed in December 2006.

At technical briefings with journalists that month, Eastern Health focused on the number of breast cancer patients — 117 — who required a change in treatment. Officials downplayed the rate of error of a large sample of tests, saying it could be as low as 10 per cent.

But Hennessey knew that the error was about four times higher, and that Eastern Health did not release to the public all that officials knew.

She told Justice Margaret Cameron that the data presented to health department officials in a November briefing were not included in technical briefing materials.

"And from that, you could draw the conclusion that they were not going to release all of the numbers?" inquiry co-counsel Sandra Chaytor asked Hennessey.

'Certainly was aware'

"I certainly was aware that all of the information that was in the data sheet were not in the press release."

Even so, Hennessey couldn't recall telling the health minister of the time, Tom Osborne, or other government officials that Eastern Health had withheld important information at a meeting held the next day.

"If I recall correctly, it was a very limited discussion. That particular day, there was very little time for the briefing," Hennessey said.

Osborne has told the inquiry that he assumed Eastern Health officials would divulge at the media briefings what he had been told the preceding month. However, he did not pay attention to media coverage of the briefings, and the summaries he received did not highlight that Eastern Health had withheld anything.

Osborne said he was disturbed to learn weeks later of the discrepancy, and was much angrier in May 2007 to learn that there was even more that Eastern Health had known that had never been disclosed to him.

Meanwhile, Hennessey also described for the inquiry how she was aware in the spring of 2007 that breast cancer patients were saying in the media that they had not been contacted by Eastern Health.

Wiseman statements false

At that time, Health Minister Ross Wiseman was saying repeatedly in the house of assembly that all patients had been contacted. Wiseman testified at the inquiry that he made the statements — which turned out to be false — based on assurances he had received from Eastern Health.

Hennessey said that while she doubted Eastern Health's information, she could not remember whether she had told Wiseman to use caution.

"And when you would hear in the media reports to the contrary — those patients coming forward — did you phone Eastern Health? Did you contact them and ask them to explain how that could be?" Chaytor asked.

"I don't remember … I, myself phoning Eastern Health on that," Hennessey said, adding that she also could not recall whether anyone else called Eastern Health on the issue.

Wiseman told the inquiry in April that he felt regret for any anxiety he may have caused to breast cancer patients, because he had insisted that Eastern Health had completed contacting patients about the testing errors, and the results of subsequent retests.

As recently as this April, the government said a small number of patients had not been contacted.

When Chaytor asked Hennessey what could have been done differently, she replied that the department needed staff dedicated to nothing else than the hormone receptor testing issue. She told Cameron that she juggled the issue among many other problems that landed on her desk.