Radiologists warn of rush to judgment in N.L. suspension

A Newfoundland and Labrador health authority moved too quickly in suspending a Gander radiologist whose work was flagged by colleagues, a radiologists' association says.

Central Health announced Friday it had suspended privileges of an unnamed radiologist who had been practising in Gander for three weeks.

The decision followed an earlier Eastern Health suspension of a radiologist who had been working at the Burin Peninsula Health Care Centre.

But Ed Mercer, president of the Newfoundland and Labrador Association of Radiologists and Nuclear Physicians, said the Gander case is significantly different, because a preliminary review is only now being launched.

"It seems like this is a knee-jerk reaction by the politicians and the powers that be the boards to bring this public before there's any proven fact," Mercer, a Corner Brook radiologist, told CBC News.

Central Health acknowledged on Friday that it would not ordinarily have announced the suspension, which happened after colleagues raised concerns about five records.

However, Central Health said public concern in the last month about the Burin case and a continuing controversy over flawed lab tests involving hundreds of breast cancer patients prompted a public disclosure.

Mercer said that was a mistake.

"The government in this case is causing fear in patients that may be unfounded," Mercer said.

"We should at least know what we are talking about before we create that kind of fear in people."

Eastern Health had conducted an internal review of the Burin radiologist's work before publicly announcing a wider review of records CT scans, X-rays and ultrasounds that he generated since being hired last November.

Joe Tumilty, the president of the Newfoundland and Labrador Medical Association, said Central Health's decision was unusual.

"We would not normally have taken these sorts of things into the public domain unless there was an absolute necessity," Tumilty said.

"Most of it can be handled at the level of the medical advisory committee or the credentials committee if there's an issue with a complaint against the physician."

Health Minister Ross Wiseman, however, defended the move, saying that Central Health officials saw enough to warrant an immediate suspension.

"The difference in Gander, I understand, [is] that the nature of the complaints that they've received thus far are such that upon looking at them they realized that they needed to move to revoke the privileges of this particular physician, sooner [rather] than later," he said.

Wiseman said patients should take some comfortthe authorityacted quickly.

Karen McGrath, chief executive officer ofCentral Health, said the five records that sparked the review "all fall in the category of misinterpreting of films or the misreading of results."

Meanwhile, Eastern Health has until the end of the week to complete a review of thousands of records generated by the Burin Peninsula radiologist.

The NLMA, speaking on behalf of some radiologists involved in the review, said a two-week deadline set by Wiseman was not long enough for the work to be done properly.