Cancer Screening System ‘A Shambles’

The introduction of a new computerised screening system for cervical cancer has been beset by problems, with doctors revealing that patient confidentiality has been compromised. GP leaders said the switch to a central electronic database for organising Scotland’s cervical cancer testing programme had been “a shambles”.

Some surgeries obtained access to patients’ details from other practices and information about a real patient was accidentally used in a training exercise. One GP practice in Glasgow appeared to have been given access to all women’s test results for the city, while two surgeries in Grampian are said to have received the wrong patient lists.

Glasgow local medical committee of the British Medical Association Scotland, which represents GPs across Greater Glasgow and Clyde, has received 138 complaints about the new system since it went live last month.

Other parts of the country have also reported problems. In Ayrshire and Arran, 21 women had to have their smear tests repeated after their samples were ruined in the changeover.

The health board said the samples were not correctly booked into the new Scottish Cervical Call-Recall System (SCCRS) and were returned to the surgery to be processed again. However, the contents of one of the vials leaked and erased the personal details on the containers.

The BMA has written to the Scottish Executive expressing concerns about the situation. Dr Dean Marshall, chairman of the association’s Scottish general practitioners committee, said he was extremely dissatisfied with the way the system had been introduced.

His members had called in April for the introduction of the new computerised system to be postponed, warning staff may not be trained in time and issues over technology had to be resolved.

Previously, women aged 20 to 60 were called for cervical smears every three years under arrangements organised by their GP surgery or regional health board.

But from May 29, a central bureau began organising the call-and-result letters in a bid to ensure greater efficiency and consistency across the country. At the same time, the paper forms GPs sent with smear specimens to laboratories were abolished and barcodes printed from a special computer programme were introduced. GPs also stopped receiving letters informing them of their patients’ results and have to look up findings on a database.

That is at the heart of the current concerns. Dr Barbara West, secretary for Glasgow local medical committee, said: “On the launch day, everyone had to log in to find their allocated passwords. There were people with no passwords, there were people with passwords that did not work.

“There were people with passwords and when they logged in they appeared to belong to someone else because they were looking at information from different practices in different parts of the city. There was absolute pandemonium.”

Since then, some practices seeking patients’ results have found none, while others have got results for the wrong patients, she said.

The “most bizarre” errors were spotted by some GPs in the lists of women being invited for screening, she added, such as patients who were tested six months earlier and people over the age of 60.

Dr Adam Bryson, medical director of National Services Scotland, which is overseeing the new system, said that previously different parts of Scotland had different, dated, screening systems and some had suffered failures in which women were missed.

He said that the new arrangements would be safer but, given the number of people involved, teething problems were expected.