A major Sydney hospital is urgently reviewing more than 1,500 patient records after discovering a litany of errors and incorrect advice by one of its leading cancer specialists, the ABC can reveal.<\/p>\n
St Vincent’s Hospital discovered “irregularities in the medical records” of some patients seen between April 2022 and June 2023 by Allan Spigelman, a cancer genetic specialist and the former clinical director of St Vincent’s Kinghorn Cancer Centre.<\/p>\n
Professor Spigelman saw patients to assess, test and advise on their risk of hereditary cancer.<\/p>\n
According to the hospital’s website, the main goal of the service is in “preventing cancer, enabling early detection and supporting patients through the process of genetic testing”.<\/p>\n
In 2023, St Vincent’s decided not to renew Professor Spigelman’s contract after almost 20 years at the hospital.<\/p>\n
The mistakes were discovered later that year, after he had left the hospital.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Allan Spigelman. (Facebook: Hunter Breast Cancer Public Forum)<\/p>\n
The ABC learned of the investigation via a letter sent to affected patients, explaining their records were being reviewed because it “did identify some issues with the advice and testing given to a select number of patients” of Professor Spigelman.<\/p>\n
When contacted for comment, St Vincent’s Hospital provided a statement saying the review to date had found that the records for more than 500 of the specialist’s patients had problems with “poor clinical documentation, incomplete correspondence, and a lack of genetic counselling”.<\/p>\n
For about 20 other patients, more serious errors were discovered which the hospital said posed a “potential risk” because he had provided “incorrect information and advice”.<\/p>\n
The doctor’s mistakes caused an “adverse clinical health outcome” for one patient, the hospital said.<\/p>\n
St Vincent’s would not disclose details of the adverse event but stated it was still going through the process of “confirming what took place and providing all necessary support for this patient”.<\/p>\n
Do you know more?<\/p>\n
St Vincent’s was at the centre of a scandal in 2016 when it was discovered another specialist had underdosed 100 cancer patients with chemotherapy.<\/p>\n
St Vincent’s said it was now reviewing all patient records starting from the beginning of the COVID pandemic when Professor Spigelman “began making changes to the service model and seeing patients without the involvement of other clinicians”.<\/p>\n
The hospital said the irregularities largely occurred when the clinician “saw patients from his private office or rooms via telephone during the COVID pandemic” and “began making changes to the service model and seeing patients without the involvement of other clinicians”.<\/p>\n
However, the errors identified in the review occurred after the pandemic, between April 2022 and June 2023.<\/p>\n
St Vincent’s Hospital appears to have been unaware of the changes made to consultations from early 2020, saying, “as soon as the hospital became aware in September 2023 of irregularities in the clinician’s approach, we moved to investigate whether there had been any impact on patient safety”.<\/p>\n
It will now conduct a further extensive review involving what could be thousands more patients who Professor Spigelman saw over an earlier two-year period, starting from March 2020.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
St Vincent’s Hospital in Darlinghurst in inner Sydney. (ABC News: Timothy Ailwood, file photo)<\/p>\n
Professor Spigelman is an emeritus professor at the University of NSW and played a pivotal role in the establishment of the Kinghorn Cancer Centre, a joint venture between St Vincent’s Hospital and the Garvan Institute of Medical Research.<\/p>\n
Professor Spigelman did not reply to messages left by the ABC.<\/p>\n
St Vincent’s said it contacted the affected patients to inform them of the errors, “to apologise and to provide follow-up care as needed”.<\/p>\n
“St Vincent’s has begun the process of contacting the broader group of patients to inform them of the lookback [review] and apologise for any inconvenience and stress caused by the review or its outcomes,” the hospital said in a statement to the ABC.<\/p>\n
Specialist referred to regulator<\/p>\n
St Vincent’s said it referred the specialist to the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA) and NSW Health in late 2023, shortly after learning of the problems.<\/p>\n
AHPRA confirmed that the referral was passed on to the NSW regulator, the Health Care Complaints Commission (HCCC).<\/p>\n
The HCCC said the commission was “unable to confirm or deny whether a practitioner is subject to a complaint”.<\/p>\n
Despite the findings of the St Vincent’s review, Professor Spigelman continues to work in the NSW health system.<\/p>\n
NSW Health said he was “currently a part-time staff specialist and part-time director of the Hunter Family Cancer Genetics Service, supporting outpatient cancer clinics at Waratah and Maitland”.<\/p>\n
NSW Health said the district’s “clinical governance unit recently undertook an initial review and assessment which did not identify any risk to patients”.<\/p>\n
St Vincent’s said it had reinstated its pre-pandemic model of care, which included oversight by multiple clinicians to ensure such irregularities did not happen again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A major Sydney hospital is urgently reviewing more than 1,500 patient records after discovering a litany of errors…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":75646,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3846],"tags":[35000,37345,1204,3899,267,70,37346,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-75645","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-genetics","8":"tag-abcinvestigations","9":"tag-allan-spigelman","10":"tag-cancer","11":"tag-genetic","12":"tag-genetics","13":"tag-science","14":"tag-st-vincents-hospital","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114453534692055804","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75645"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75645\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}