The Junta de Andalucía has reported the reestablishment of the Clic Salud application and with it, access to all users’ medical records and data. Late on Tuesday, the Andalusian Health Service (SAS) warned that it had “temporarily” prevented the consultation of clinical records. The notice came after Amama had reported to the Prosecutor’s Office the disappearance and alteration of her diagnostic tests in the Clic Salud application and on the Diraya platform, the SAS computer management and information system.
Although the Minister of Health, Antonio Sanz, denied shortly after Amama presented her letter that medical records from the SAS had disappeared and demanded that the association stop “spreading lies”, on social networks many women began to spread the word that they could not access their mammograms. Late in the afternoon, the Board recognized a computer error, which it attributed to a spike in the use of the application, motivated “perhaps” by the complaint of women affected by the delay in the diagnosis of breast cancer screening, according to a source close to the Government of Juan Manuel Moreno.
The SAS insists that “in no case has this computer outage led to the deletion or loss of any test, report or clinical history, which can be accessed normally.” The source consulted indicates that the service was restored after one in the morning. Although they cannot specify when the problems began, the interlocutor indicates that the application had been in an update process for some time which could have caused failures in recent days.
Ángela Claverol, president of Amama, indicated on Tuesday, after presenting the brief to the Prosecutor’s Office, that when they began to require documentation from women in order to file a lawsuit for failures in the prevention program, they found that many could not find their mammograms or ultrasounds in Clic Salud and that their family doctor could not locate them in Diraya either. The irregularities went further. In some cases, the tests were still there, but they had been manipulated, with changes in terminology, removing the mention of Bi-RAD3, the inconclusive cancer stage, or indicating that the lesion could be benign, instead of the indication of risk. In other records the name of the radiologist had been erased. All these facts are accompanied by evidence, they emphasize in Amama.
For the association, these circumstances may constitute a crime and represent an obstruction to judicial action by the affected women who cannot provide evidence to support that they were not informed of the results of their first screening, despite the fact that the diagnosis was inconclusive. That is why they have asked the Prosecutor’s Office to investigate.
The recognition that medical records were, in fact, not accessible comes one day before the health debate taking place in Parliament this afternoon. On Tuesday, Moreno himself recognized that the health problem was structural and announced a remodeling of the SAS and the incorporation of 4,400 new health professionals, including 1,200 doctors. An announcement that all political groups and unions have received with skepticism given the difficulties that the Board is encountering in hiring the 65 radiologists of the shock plan to tackle the breast cancer screening crisis.
