Eastern Health wants review results kept mum

A team of lawyers for Eastern Health appeared in Supreme Court of Newfoundland Friday in an attempt to keep the results of two reviews of laboratory practices confidential, and away from public scrutiny in the upcoming commission of inquiry into faulty hormone receptor tests.

External reviewers investigated Eastern Health's laboratories in 2005 and 2006 after the authority found some of the tests it had done for breast cancer patients were inaccurate. Eastern Health sent almost 1,000 hormone receptor tests to other hospitals to be retested at the time and found 300 of the tests were flawed.

Eastern Health also asked the court to ban thecommission from interviewing the people who conducted the laboratory reviews.

St. John's Lawyer Ches Crosbie is leading a class action suit against Eastern Health, representing cancer patients who say they were harmed by flawed hormone receptor tests at the health authority's laboratories.

Crosbie told CBC News he wants Eastern Health to give the auditors' reports on the laboratories to the commission.

"I represent a group of people whose overriding concern is that we get at the truth and learn the truth," Crosbie said. "If the commission is to learn the truth, then these documents surely should be produced."

The Commission of Inquiry on Hormone Receptor Testing, which will be overseen by Justice Margaret A. Cameron, is scheduled to begin in January 2008. The commission will investigate why the problem with the hormone receptor tests took so long to detect, how the health authority handled the false tests, and how those false tests affected cancer patients.

In a written statement, the commission's lawyers say they're opposed to Eastern Health's application, warning that if the application is successful, Cameron won't be able to do her job.

Officials with Eastern Health say they made the application to protect the health authority's quality assurance program, adding Eastern Health promised the auditors their reports wouldn't be made public. It said it fearsauditors won't be candid in the future if their comments aren't protected.