[NRSKarenRN]

Ex - Doctor Claims Pap Tests Were Falsified
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: December 18, 2003


Filed at 11:30 p.m. ET

PITTSBURGH (AP) -- The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center certified thousands of Pap tests when they were never reviewed by physicians, putting an unknown number of women at risk of diseases that may have gone undetected, two lawsuits allege.

The suits filed Wednesday and Thursday allege the medical center's Magee-Womens Hospital routinely misled patients into thinking their tests were examined by doctors by putting doctors' electronic signatures on test results.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/nati...Pap-Tests.html

Story in AP/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
http://www.post-gazette.com/breaking/20031218upmcp5.asp

[HomeNurse4kids]

I know we are taught that it's perfectly within our rights as patients to ask for a second opinion, but who (in this day and age) can afford to do so with health care/insurance costs so high. And even if you could afford it, how many women would actually go through a second pap smear UGH! just for that other opinion? Surely not I! Yet many people could have been spared serious complications if they had been properly diagnosed. ....
Such a shame.