Hospital technician gave false negative results to over 1,000 women because she was "behind in work"

[fried eggs]

(CNN) -- A former Georgia hospital technician was sentenced to up to six months in prison after pleading guilty to manipulating the mammogram records of 1,289 patients. Ten of those women were given false negatives, and two of them are now dead, a prosecutor says.

Rachael Rapraeger told the patients at Perry Hospital that their mammograms yielded negative results when a doctor had never reviewed them, according to court documents.

(Her lawyer) called the sentence "very fair" and said his client takes responsibility for her crimes and is remorseful that people suffered. Explaining why Rapraeger told so many patients their mammograms were negative, Buford said Rapraeger became overburdened at work and was only trying to please her bosses.

"She just got behind in her work and wanted to try and get caught up," the attorney said. "She made a poor decision to start entering negative reports just so she could keep up. She didn't want to fall behind on her work requirements."

Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/16/health/georgia-false-mammogram-cancer-sentencing/

[PoliticAverse]

1. "very fair"?! n/t

[babylonsister]

2. Are you KIDDING me???

How could she be so heartless? She obviously didn't think of consequences and apparently she didn't care. As long as her bosses were pleased. Ugh.

[Stuart G]

4. K and R..nt

[Liberal_in_LA]

6. plus one

[lostincalifornia]

3. It is at the very least missed murder. It really is unforgivable. However, there is also a

Problem with the hospital's computer system. Something is definitely lacking to allow a technician to override a doctors report without a doctors authorization

[anneboleyn]

5. I was wondering this -- where the hell were the radiologists? The techs don't "do" the reports --

the radiologists do. And they did not notice a huge number of missing reports? Did she fake the signatures of the radiologists on the reports? That plus MURDER deserves more than six months.

[lostincalifornia]

7. Exactly. Of course the administrators might have given her security rights to change a doctors

Report, or she somehow got hold of the radiologists passwords. Either way, it sure seems like a security breach

[LisaL]

15. There were no doctor's report at all.

Doctor never reviewed the results, yet technician told the patients that their results were negative.

[lostincalifornia]

29. Then that is the flaw in the system. A positive result should not be given to the

patient by a technician. In fact it is the radiologist who releases the the report to the physicians office that ordered the mammogram, and it is that physicians office who informs the patient. From the radiologist to the ordering physicians office that should all be handled electronically, I have no idea why a technician would be allowed to interface with a patient. That should only be done by a physician or a nurse.

[LisaL]

31. It was all handled electronically. Apparently somebody gave her a pin number for the radiologist.

[lostincalifornia]

35. I meant as soon as the physician selects the submit button, the report SHOULD be transmitted to PACs

and the ordering physicians office, there is absolutely no need for anyone to interfere with that process.

In fact, many systems, do NOT allow any changes once the report was submitted.

[LisaL]

36. It sounds to me that she never send the information to the radiologist, then used the pin number of

the actual radiologist to submit the report as if she were the radiologist.
So the ordering physician would wrongly believe the data was reviewed by the radiologist when it was not.
Otherwise I have no idea why she personally would tell results to the patients? It should be the ordering physicians' job.

[lostincalifornia]

37. Understood

[LisaL]

14. It sounds that she never showed the results to the doctor.

[surrealAmerican]

8. The headline is misleading.

She gave 10 false negative results, which is bad enough: two people are dead because of this.

[fried eggs]

10. No. Of the 1289 women she lied to,

10 of them had a positive result, and 2 of the 10 have died. It's like taking an exam without reading the questions and only choosing A for the answer to every question. Some will be right, some wrong.

[surrealAmerican]

11. I must have misread that.

I thought they meant two of the ten.

But "false negative" in this context has a specific meaning. She failed to properly analyze over 1200 tests, but only those that actually would have had positive results could be called false negatives.

[bunnies]

32. FWIW, I had the same reaction. nt

[newfie11]

9. I am a registered x-ray technologist and was registered in mammography also until I retired.

I would question the quality control of this facility! They need to be thoroughly investigated by ACR and I'm pretty sure they will be shut down.
I did mammos for 40 years, additional views if ordered by a radiologist, needle bx but typing reports was never done by any tech. I worked in large facilities and a mobile, none had techs sending out patient reports. There is no time for that.
I can tell you this tech will loose her RT and Mammo certifications permanently.

[Gormy Cuss]

33. ^^^This^^^

What this tech did was despicable but where was the QC? Where is the investigation of the employer who placed such high workloads on the techs?

[newfie11]

34. Sadly it will come but to late

This place will loose it's accreditation and be shut down. Everyone involved in this, radiologists, techs, transcription, etc will be sued and loose.

I would question what the tech says is the whole true. It will be interesting to
see the rest of the story.
The end results are 2 women have died and how many others have missed cancers still waiting.

[BrotherIvan]

13. This comes from downsizing in order to save $$

So many people are doing what used to be 2-10 people's jobs twenty years ago. What she did was very wrong, but I'm sure she isn't lying when she said she was so overburdened with work and probably afraid to lose her job. Administrators take that risk with people's lives when they don't staff properly. Gotta buy more chandeliers for the lobby.

[LisaL]

16. Two women have actually died.

[BrotherIvan]

18. Yes that is very wrong.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

22. Why are you sure?

I know it's ideologically soothing to blame the administrators rather than the culprit, but we don't actually have any evidence other than her word that it was the adminstrator's fault.

[tiny elvis]

26. describe the soothing function of blaming administrators

some hospitals in GA will not fill positions because they will not bend on a cheap labor policy
the job criteria, qualified and desperate, are usually mutually exclusive

[BrotherIvan]

41. "trying to catch up on her work"

Implies she was so overloaded she fudged results to get caught up. All over this thread there are knowledgable people saying that procedure was not followed. Usually, 2 + 2 = 4

[Orsino]

23. Don't know if that's true in this case...

...but it is a general woe in the profession and an inevitable result in for-profit health care. We are eager to blame the tech, perhaps rightly, but I have to wonder whether her getting "behind in her work" was entirely her fault.

[Bartleby73]

17. sorry but....

she should have been given life in prison.

[LisaL]

19. I certainly agree that it seems like the sentence is way too short for what she did.

[Logical]

20. Not life, but 5 years for sure. nt

[Victor_c3]

21. Pretty much my feelings on it

6 months is kind of like saying "yup, sorry your loved one died. What's on TV? Did you see the Voice the other night? Wasn't that short weird looking dude awesome?"

[avebury]

24. Unfortunately the only recourse for the families of

her victims may be in civil court against both the hospital and technician.

[seabeyond]

25. "remorseful that people suffered." dead. is beyond suffering. nt

[liberal N proud]

27. Not to defend her reprehensible crimes but why was she behind on her work?

It could be because the corporate run hospital cut the staff so thin that they just could not keep up.

Does that excuse her actions? - NO!

The blame may also lie in this nations obsession with staff reductions where 1 person is now doing the work of 3 or more in some places.

[IronLionZion]

39. corporations are "efficient" like that. nt

[CFLDem]

28. Why don't the suits ever go to jail?

Mass negligence all around. And if course we never actually solve the problem.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

40. In this case, possibly because there's not one scrap of evidence they did anything wrong?

A criminally negligent, selfish and demonstrably dishonest employee claiming she is overworked is not evidence that a hospital is mismanaged. It may be, of course - we have no evidence that it isn't - but we don't have any evidence that it is.

[meanit]

30. Anyone remember the tax debacle around 1983 or 84?

The Reagan administration cut the IRS staffing so badly that people processing the federal income tax forms were taking them into the bathrooms and flushing them down the toilets because they were so overloaded with work.

I know that the OP is about human beings and not tax forms, but this smacks of the same type of GOP management style.

With that said, Rapraeger has shown an appalling disregard for people's well being just to keep her job. It's truly contemptible.

[Vashta Nerada]

38. She should get life in prison and the hospital needs to be shut down.