Health New Zealand has issued an apology after 25 patients at Auckland City Hospital were mistakenly told they had a sexually-transmitted disease (STI).
Group Director of Operations, Te Toka Tumai Michael Shepherd, stated that the clinical questioning of a result led the organisation to investigate, and a false positive result was subsequently discovered.
“Our initial investigation showed that the false positive result was restricted to a single test type and suggested potential contamination in the processing workflow. We identified that four test batches ran between May 23 and June 4 were affected”.
“We are undertaking further investigation to identify the root cause, and we have moved the test to different equipment until our investigation is complete,” Shepherd added.
He acknowledged “the distress this incident has caused some patients”.
“We have been contacting them and apologising for this,” he said.
“We began contacting all affected patients by phone on June 4 and, to date, we have been able to contact all but six patients. We continue to try and contact the remaining patients.
Photo Credit: Auckland Hospital
