WFAA report: Thousands of patients at JPS alerted after mammogram issues

Tarrant County’s John Peter Smith Hospital paid a $4,000 fine and was required to retrain doctors and X-ray techs after a random review revealed potential problems with thousands of mammogram images and employees misreading results.

WFAA has learned more than 4,000 patients might be affected and could require re-screening.

"It's easy to exaggerate this and I don't want to take emphasis away from it, but what I'd like people to understand is we recognized there's a problem. We've resolved the problem. Obviously, if someone hasn't been contacted and needs to, they need to come see us,” said Warren Norred, board member for the Tarrant County Hospital District, which oversees JPS.

The American College of Radiology made the discovery at the JPS Medical Home Southeast Tarrant facility located at 1050 W. Arkansas Lane in Arlington. This is the only location where mammograms were in question.

ACR sampled 30 cases at that facility performed between May 2, 2015 and May 2, 2017, and reported that 18 of them “did not meet the ACR’s clinical image evaluation criteria and failed the AMR [Advanced Mammography Review] with deficiencies; some of which were severe,” according to the Texas Department of Health and Human Services.

Despite voluntarily suspending its mammography services at the Arlington location on June 6, JPS did not alert the 4,000 patients until it mailed them a certified letter on Sept. 1.

JPS said it also alerted 200 referring physicians.

But Norred, the only person associated with JPS willing to be interviewed, said JPS has yet to make contact with hundreds of those affected.

"My understanding is everybody got a certified letter and somewhere around a couple thousand of those have come back,” explained Norred. “And then I know we've made about a thousand phone calls."

It’s uncertain exactly how many patients have yet to be notified. A spokeswoman for JPS did not provide that figure.

Officially, JPS downplayed the issue.

"We put our patients first in everything we do. I would be the first person to raise a concern over questionable images. I feel strongly that the mammograms performed by JPS were of appropriate diagnostic quality and no patient's health was in danger," said Dr. Scott Kayser, the chair of radiology for the JPS Health Network in a statement provided by a spokeswoman. Read the rest of the story at WFAA.com

This story was originally published October 31, 2017 at 1:01 PM with the headline "WFAA report: Thousands of patients at JPS alerted after mammogram issues."