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ST. JOHN'S, N.L. - Marie Hickey was thrilled that a $17.5-million deal to settle Newfoundland and Labrador's biggest public health failure will spare her and other breast cancer patients a protracted court battle.
Hickey, one of hundreds of patients whose breast cancer tests were botched, said Friday she's lucky to be healthy enough to see a resolution.
"I'm just so happy that this is not going to be dragged out any longer, that it's not going to end up in court," said the 52-year-old St. John's resident.
"And I'm more than happy with the settlement that they did reach."
Hickey was 42 when she was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent a lumpectomy and chemotherapy. It was six years before she realized that a test to help determine her best course of treatment was botched.
An accurate result may have led her to pursue an "extra layer" of treatment and protection through the use of drugs such as Tamoxifen, she said. But she is healthy today and said she tries not to dwell too much on what might have been.
In a joint statement Friday, the province's largest health board and the law firm spearheading the lawsuit announced the settlement. It includes about 2,000 people and must still be approved in court.
"Class members wanted a financial settlement that demonstrated sincerity and respect," Rosalind Jardine, one of the class members, said in the statement.
"This settlement does that."
Eastern Health CEO Vickie Kaminski apologized for the devastating toll the errors took on patients and their relatives.
"We recognize that a number of people lost a lot - some of them their lives and some of them their mothers, their sisters, their daughters," she said.
"No amount of money can adequately compensate people who have experienced this kind of error in their medical treatment. This settlement is meant to demonstrate Eastern Health's sincere apology to the class members and their families and to provide some recognition of their ongoing struggles."
The lawsuit was launched in 2006 after mistakes were detected on hormone receptor tests, which play an important role in determining the most appropriate course of treatment for men and women with breast cancer.
In 2007, Premier Danny Williams launched a public inquiry to find out what went wrong.
From the St. John's laboratory that processed the flawed tests up to the provincial government, Justice Margaret Cameron found glaring problems across the health-care system.
In her final report earlier this year, the provincial Supreme Court judge said quality control at the lab was "so little and so haphazard as to be non-existent."
"There was a failure of both accountability and oversight at all levels," Cameron said.
In all, at least 425 patients had their tests botched from 1997 to 2005.
Of those, 127 have died according to an update provided by Eastern Health in July. But it may never be known how many of them died as a result of missing out on potentially life-saving treatment because of inaccurate tests.
It's not yet clear how compensation from the settlement will be shared among the class members.
The deal came after three days of negotiations led by mediator George Adams, a former Ontario Superior Court judge.
It includes the establishment of a memorial.
Problems with the testing were detected in the spring of 2005, when doctors began questioning the hormone receptor test results of a patient with invasive lobular carcinoma, a form of breast cancer.
After retesting, it was discovered that the initial test result was wrong, as were those for a small sample of other patients.
Eastern Health subsequently halted testing in its lab and transferred its hormone receptor tests to Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto. The health board then started a review of all hormone receptor tests from 1997 to 2005.
Kaminski says the settlement offers Eastern Health and its patients a chance to rebuild trust and proceed with Cameron's recommendations to restore faith in the health-care system.
"We need the people that have been affected by this to help us with that," Kaminski said.
"So if we could get this part resolved, then we can move forward on the rest of the journey which actually will help heal the relationship between us and the patients that we let down so terribly."
Cameron issued 60 recommendations that, among other things, call for more training for clinicians, improved record-keeping and mandatory continuing education for laboratory technologists.
Cameron has asked the provincial government to report by March 31, 2010, on the status of her recommendations.
Williams has promised to swiftly follow through on at least half of her recommendations and look further into those that will require more time to implement.
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