There'll be no 'I'm sorry' to Eastern Health from Premier Danny Williams.
"No are you kidding, apology?" a visibly upset Mr. Williams scoffed to reporters Thursday, defending his government and Health Minister Ross Wiseman's role in an Eastern Health press release boondoggle this spring.
"There will be no apology. Why should I apologize for protecting the health and the safety of the people of this province?"
Eastern Health acting CEO Louise Jones said later Thursday it isn't about an apology.
"That's not the issue here … this is nothing around apologies or whatever."
Ms. Jones noted government makes the policies and provides the funding.
"The issue here is we have been working very closely with government for an understanding of how we move forward with this issue of public disclosure and individual patient disclosure … We really have to work together to understand each other's perspective."
Mr. Williams and Health Minister Ross Wiseman were critical of Eastern Health for how it released numbers this spring of newly discovered breast cancer patients affected by hormone receptor testing errors years earlier. The news came late on a Friday in April, with no one available to answer questions.
The numbers were also buried at the bottom of the release, which declared Eastern Health was making progress with the Cameron report recommendations.
Mr. Williams told reporters at the time "They should be shot over there."
But a CBC News report last week indicated senior government officials had seen the press release in advance, and the government played a role in Eastern Health publicly releasing information.
CBC obtained notes and correspondence under provincial access-to-information laws.
Afterwards, NDP leader Lorraine Michael demanded Mr. Williams apologize for his wrath this spring.
Eastern Health said it was trying to validate numbers; it wanted to tell individual affected patients before going public and it needed more time to do that when it was ordered by Cabinet to put out a press release.
Eastern Health vice president of communications Jennifer Guy said Wednesday "You have to go public in a timely and accurate manner, but we weren't able to do that, and as a matter of fact, we're still not able to do that two months later."
Mr. Williams fired back Thursday, saying the last thing he wanted to do was weigh in to the media on the debacle, but couldn't sit back and watch the "spin."
"So if that was the case and Eastern Health were allowed to do what they wanted to do, we would still not have public disclosure today of what we disclosed immediately after cabinet on that day back in April.
"I got to tell you over the past couple of days to watch the shenanigans that they're going on with in front of cameras and everything else. It's unbelievable. You know patients' lives are affected here. How people can get on and grandstand and go through this process."
Mr. Williams came out scrapping, armed with documents and having a staffer pass around an e-mail from Ms. Guy to Mr. Wiseman's communications director Ronalda Walsh indicating government doesn't approve the health authority's news releases.
Mr. Williams said Mr. Wiseman was at a health ministers' conference in Halifax with his senior officials at the time the news release came out and couldn't be expected to catch the information being buried, or that officials wouldn't be available.
"To require him to have the detail of scrutiny of every single word I think is unfair."
Mr. Williams added cabinet - which met the day before the news release and told Mr. Wiseman to order Eastern Health to get the numbers out - just wanted disclosure and the manner was chosen by the authority.
"We did not instruct them to do it at four on a Friday afternoon. We did not instruct them to bury it in a news release. And we certainly did not instruct them to make sure that no one was available for comment on a Friday afternoon.
"Now from my perspective, I wanted to do what was right for patient health and safety in the province, what was right for public disclosure."
Ms. Jones said her officials were working "diligently to find a balance" between ensuring patients were notified before it was in the public realm.
"We made a decision on the third of April and I respect and understand where the premier would be coming from. Those were the decisions we made. Those were patients first and that has always been our issue, working to ensure the patients who are directly affected are the ones who get notified, rather than through the public media."
Mr. Williams said he was looking forward to Vickie Kaminski taking over as CEO this month to get "things under control" at the authority.
The premier not only slammed Eastern Health, but also lashed out at Ms. Michael, saying her political opportunism has disgraced the work NDP leaders such as Jack Layton and Ed Broadbent.
The premier also reminded media Eastern Health had failed to use the word 'breast' in its original searches of databases to find patients affected by the breast cancer test - used to determine treatment options.
Robert Thompson, chairman of the task force on adverse events, brought the Newfoundland and Labrador Centre for Health Information in last year to broaden that search and it continues that work.
Also Thursday, Mr. Wiseman defended Mr. Williams' comments.
"The premier is the leader of the province. The people look to the premier for leadership."
However, Mr. Wiseman said he didn't feel anything had changed since the issue first came up in April.
"Eastern Health was directed on the day before to provide an update on where they were with (estrogen receptor/progesterone receptor), the search for additional patients who might have been impacted, and they provided the update on the (next day).
"There was a criticism of how they went about that. There was a criticism by the premier, and a criticism by me as minister, and we reiterated it yesterday and the premier reiterated it today."
St. John's Telegram
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