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CMDHB / Supplied
A home fecal immunochemical test (FIT) detects the first signs of bowel cancer.
The Ministry of Health’s national bowel screening program apologizes to bowel cancer patients who were mistakenly sent a letter inviting them to participate in bowel screening.
They were invited to take part in a home fecal immunochemical testing program.
Chief Health Officer Dr. Ashley Bloomfield said the letters were generated by a computer glitch and sent without proper automated filtering.
“We know that dealing with cancer is uncertain and stressful, and we regret that we increased that distress through this unfortunate mistake.”
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Move your ass
Liana and Simon Doull talk about why they support Bowel Cancer NZ’s Move Your Butt campaign. (First published June 2020)
The letters were mailed to about 1,262 people in the Tairawhiti, Canterbury and South Canterbury district health board areas.
Medical director Dr. Andrew Simpson said about 200 people called the ministry after receiving the letters.
“In many cases, it is understandable that they were upset by the letters that came when they already had or have had bowel cancer.”
He said that many people who called the ministry supported the screening program and understood the mistake.
“We have apologized and explained that we are taking steps to ensure this does not happen again.”
CHRIS SKELTON / Things
Hope Benns is living with terminal bowel cancer after GPs failed to diagnose her disease.
A similar written apology will be provided to everyone who receives the letters in error, he said.
The failure was caused by the failure of an automatic download of data from the national cancer registry that did not generate an alert as it should have.
“The names of patients in the registry, who had previously been diagnosed with bowel cancer, should have been removed from the list of people invited for screening, but that did not happen.”
A manual fix had already been implemented and the ministry was working on a permanent fix that would prevent letters from being generated automatically if the filtering step was not completed.
In the first instance, any interested person should call the ministry’s national bowel screening program on 0800 924 432.
