With horrors like this, who needs a failed national healthcare plan?

thisnumbersdisconnected · Apr 28, 2014

Fox News: Former Georgia technician falsified nearly 1,300 mammogram reports

PERRY, Ga. – Sharon Holmes found a lump in her left breast quite by accident. At work one day as a high school custodian, her hand brushed up against her chest and she felt a knot sticking out. She was perplexed. After all, just three months earlier, she had been given an all-clear sign from her doctor after a mammogram.

A new mammogram in February 2010 showed she in fact had an aggressive stage 2 breast cancer. The horror of the discovery was compounded by the reason: The earlier test results she had gotten weren't just read incorrectly. They were falsified.

She wasn't alone in facing this news. The lead radiological technologist at Perry Hospital in Perry, a small community about 100 miles south of Atlanta, had for about 18 months been signing off on mammograms and spitting out reports showing nearly 1,300 women were clear of any signs of breast cancer or abnormalities.
-------
The tech, Rachael Rapraeger, pleaded guilty earlier this month to 10 misdemeanor charges of reckless conduct and one felony charge of computer forgery. She was sentenced to serve up to six months in a detention center, to serve 10 years on probation during which she can't work in the health care field and to pay a $12,500 fine.

The reasons she gave were vague. She told police she had personal issues that caused her to stop caring about her job, that she had fallen behind processing the piles of mammogram films that stacked up. So she went into the hospital's computer system, assumed the identities of physicians, and gave each patient a clear reading, an investigative report says. That allowed her to avoid the time-consuming paperwork required before the films are brought to a reading room for radiologists to examine, her lawyer Floyd Buford told the AP.
Click to expand...

It took several women discovered breast abnormalities on their own for the hospital to figure out what was going on. Worse, her confession wasn't enough, according to prosecutors, to get her a longer sentence. Apparently it isn't "all that big a deal" for women to have their lives put in danger by a self-possessed technician who "just doesn't care."

InTheLight · Apr 28, 2014

That's terrible behavior by the medical tech. Sounds like the prosecutor didn't do a good job either.

With horrors like this, who needs a failed national healthcare plan?

thisnumbersdisconnected New Member

InTheLight Well-Known Member
Site Supporter

Useful Searches

With horrors like this, who needs a failed national healthcare plan?

thisnumbersdisconnected New Member

InTheLight Well-Known Member Site Supporter

InTheLight Well-Known Member
Site Supporter