OOPS

Nearly 175K Patients Weren’t Told COVID Test Results Might Have Been Wrong

State health officials knew that the hospital might not have been processing tests accurately more than three months before its lab suspended testing.

More than 174,000 people in Utah weren’t notified that their coronavirus test results were potentially incorrect, though state health officials had known for months that the hospital processing their tests might not have been complying with guidelines for accurate results. The Salt Lake Tribune reported Sunday that public officials knew about problems with testing at Timpanogos Regional Hospital as early as May 2020. Testing at the hospital’s lab was only suspended, over the use of “non-validated and non-verified instruments,” on Aug. 23. In that period, stretching more than three months, no patients were told about the possibility of false negatives or false positives, according to the Tribune. Though the hospital then drafted a letter about the risk of inaccuracy to be sent to just over 100,000 of the patients whose results had been flagged, it was never sent. Telling the affected people did nothing to aid “the public health imperative,” an official involved with the decision wrote at the time. “That goes to trust—100,000-plus people were trusting this entity with their health information,” a former state epidemiologist told the Tribune, “and if what they got back was wrong, they deserve to know the truth.”