Pathologist shortage in Outaouais has patients waiting months for biopsy results

Hundreds of patients could be waiting months for biopsy results as a backlog of samples plagues theOutaouais region.

Documents obtained by Radio-Canada showthere was a backlog of 4,000 tissue samples at the end of March.

Those 4,000 samples could represent between 200 and 300 patients, said Guy Morissette, director of professional services at the integrated health centre and social services of the Outaouais region.

He said part of the problem was a lack of pathologists who work out of theHull hospital, which receives samples from seven other hospitals andprivate clinicsacross the region.

Not enough pathologists

At the time of the inspection the lab had five pathologists. That number has since increased to six when another pathologist was hired in July and he said a seventh has also been hired and is expected to start sometime between November and January. An eighth pathologist is expected to be hired within the next year.

That months-long delay is a problem as testresults should be sentto a doctor within days, not months, he said.

Urgent samples are usually processed within three days and non-urgent samples by two weeks. But as of March, some non-urgent patients were waiting up to four months to have their tissue analyzed and the results sent to their physician.

That wait has since decreased to about two months, Morissette said. But that`s stilldouble the one-month timeline that's stipulated in guidelines from the Quebec Ministry of Health and Social Services.

Patients sufferpsychological, if not physical,problems

That wait can cause undue distress for a patient, said Louis-Philippe Mayrand, commissioner of complaints and service quality in the Outaouais health region. He said his office has received more than a dozen complaints since April.

Aside from the psychological aspect of the delay, he said there could also be physical impacts if a sample is processed too late for a procedure to be done. Although he said his office hasn't been notified that a patient's health was put at risk by the backlog.

Morissette acknowledged the stress on patients.He also said mistakes can happen where a sample marked as non-urgent returns as cancerous.

"It's possible. We're taking means to reduce the possibility of having those cases that will pop up that we don't expect there's a cancer and then there is one."

He said controls are in place to help minimize mistakes. Those controls include doctors visually inspecting the tissue for malignant markers before sending it off for testing.

"We encourage our physicians to call the pathologist and the pathologist will never refuse to [read] the case within days when it's asked by a surgeon or dermatologist who says 'I have a high suspicion of cancer'," he said.

He said it also depends on where tissue is removed from.

We know there may be some surprises with those samples. But usually, there's not many surprises that we get.- GuyMorissette, director of professional services at the integrated health centre and social services of theOutaouaisregion.

"When it's a wart, it's rare that you will have [cancerous cells] but other times there are other lesions that we try to prioritize because we know there may be some surprises with those samples. But usually, there's not many surprises that we get."

Even as the lab deals with the current backlog, another 50 to 100 new tissue samples arrive for testing every day. ButMorissettesaid he's been told eight pathologists should be enough to get rid of the backlog.