Another 1,500 patients of the jailed jailed Altrincham breast surgeon Ian Paterson, more than two decades after he treated them, after the discovery of an old IT database.
Private Healthcare Group Spire contacted all 5,500 identifiable patients of Paterson in late 2020, Spire undertook a further step to be certain that there were no outstanding patients who might require support, dating back to the earliest years of his practice.
To do this, it revisited historic legacy IT systems in use between 1993 and the early 2000s, containing information about patients from over 20 years ago which had been thought to be inaccessible.
However, following a further complex analysis of these legacy systems, Spire was able to identify the details of around 1,500 patients.
These patients will now be contacted by Spire Healthcare and where appropriate, offered a review of the treatment they received by Paterson over 20 years ago and support.
Scottish born Ian was convicted of 17 counts of wounding with intent and three counts of unlawful wounding by a jury at Nottingham Crown Court at the end of April.
During a seven-week trial the jury heard harrowing evidence from 10 patients treated in the private sector between 1997 and 2011.
Paterson lied to his alleged victims, “exaggerating or quite simply inventing risk of cancer” then often claimed payments for more expensive procedures.
Dr Cathy Cale, Spire Healthcare’s Group Medical Director, said:
“Over the past couple of years, we’ve been absolutely committed to identifying, tracking down and contacting all living patients of Ian Paterson regardless of when they were treated. This has entailed going back over legacy computer systems which were in place from the beginning of Ian Paterson’s practice in 1993 until the early 2000s, and includes data which were thought to be previously inaccessible.
“Understandably, it’s not been easy to navigate our way around some of these data which are more than 20 years old. But, now that we have been able to extract new patient information from these historic IT systems, we will write to those patients in the next few weeks to offer them any support they need.
“We are very sorry for the significant distress and harm suffered by patients who were treated by Ian Paterson. We accepted the recommendations of the Independent Inquiry into Paterson in 2020 and are fully committed to implementing them.
“Although we cannot put right the wrongs of the past, we are determined to do everything we can to support the victims of Ian Paterson including those he treated before Spire was in existence. That is why we are taking this action today.”
