Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 17 May 2018

Public Accounts Committee

Implications of CervicalCheck Revelations (Resumed)
2016 Financial Statements of the State Claims Agency (Resumed)
2016 Financial Statements of the HSE (Resumed)

9:00 am

Mr. John Gleeson:

The laboratories have to be accredited to an international standard and that has to be independently certified. It is not done by us but by the national accreditation body. That is the first thing to be able to have and maintain registration. The second thing is that they must participate in external quality assurance schemes. These schemes, which are independent, receive a number of slides, which they grade and return. The slides are scored and they pass or fail. They have to maintain pass consistently. Third, they return quarterly metrics of great detail and depth about individual screener sensitivity and individual workloads. These are all referenced to the guidelines for quality assurance in cervical screening's cytopathology section where it sets out individual screener workloads and sensitivity requirements and individual pathologist's workload requirements. There is a lot in there and this is external quality assurance. We are constantly monitoring those and if they fall out of those, then we go to work to correct it immediately.