A Dunedin woman with breast cancer, which has now spread because a malignant lump was missed, is calling for private hospitals to follow the example of public hospitals and be more open about serious mistakes.
The woman, who wanted to remain anonymous for personal reasons, had a lump removed from her breast at Mercy Hospital last year.
About eight months later she found another lump, but three fine-needle aspirations, which are used to diagnose cancer, were inconclusive.
Eventually, the lump began to show definite signs of cancer and the woman had a mastectomy at Dunedin Hospital.
However the mastectomy came too late and the cancer had already spread to her lymph nodes, and despite further treatment has now spread further.
Doctors told her when she had the first lump removed it was likely the second lump had already been there, but was missed.
When she read about the serious medical mistakes and deaths at both Dunedin and other public hospitals around the country earlier this week she thought people should know such mistakes happened at private hospitals as well.
"It is important for people to realise just because you are paying money you are not necessarily getting better quality treatment.
"The openness and transparency should apply to the private sector as well."
Earlier this week, it was revealed 258 patients were involved in medical mistakes at the 21 district health boards around the country. Of those, 76 died.
This is the second year the hospitals have released information about serious mistakes and deaths, and the aim was to improve safety in hospitals by encouraging transparent reporting of incidents so others could learn from mistakes and they were not repeated.
The increased transparency was "undoubtedly a good thing", the woman said.
However, she did not believe the reporting had captured all the incidents and she had talked to about six people about her situation and discovered they had had similar experiences.
The Otago District Health Board reported seven serious mistakes which included a mammogram result incorrectly reported as clear.
The woman said she wanted to make it clear she was not criticising health professionals, and the care and support she had received at Dunedin Hospital was outstanding - she just wanted to see the entire health sector doing its best to ensure mistakes were not repeated.
Mercy Hospital director of nursing Philippa Pringle said she could not comment as this particular case had not been brought to their attention.
