The focus at Newfoundland and Labrador's breast cancer inquiry will shift this week to inside the health authority that managed hundreds of controversial pathology tests.

George Tilley, the former chief executive officer of Eastern Health, is expected to begin testifying Monday, once Health Minister Ross Wiseman completes his testimony.

Former Eastern Health CEO George Tilley, who resigned in July 2007, is expected to testify Monday.
(CBC)

Tilley's testimony will be critical, as he ran Eastern Health — by far the largest of four authorities that operate at arm's length from government — when managers discovered serious errors at its pathology lab, halted testing and ordered retests to be done.

Wiseman said to the inquiry last week that Tilley told him that legal advice led Eastern Health not to make a full disclosure in December 2006 of what it knew about erroneous hormone receptor tests involving more than 300 breast cancer patients.

One of the critical areas of testimony will include how Eastern Health communicated with patients.

Wiseman testified last week that Eastern Health was "adamant" and "insistent" that it had contacted all patients whose samples needed to be retested, and that he later learned this was not true.

2 patients told last week of retesting

The issue may even now be more current than government thought. Eastern Health confirmed that two breast cancer patients were informed just last week that their samples were only this month retested.

It is not known whether the patients may have received inappropriate treatment.

Peter Dawe, executive director of the Canadian Cancer Society's Newfoundland and Labrador division, said the retesting and communications process is key.

"You're looking at almost three years of a process of contacting people, and the communications process, and the inquiry will delve into these areas," Dawe said.

The inquiry is examining how the St. John's lab produced wrong results between 1997 and 2005, and then how officials dealt with the problem.

The inquiry has already heard from former health ministers John Ottenheimer and Tom Osborne. Ottenheimer testified that he wanted the public to be told about problems at the lab in July 2005, when he was first informed, but deferred to advice from within Eastern Health.

Osborne testified that on several occasions he was not briefed on important details about the hormone receptor testing issue. In one case, he said, a comprehensive briefing note was sent in August 2006 to Premier Danny Williams, but that the information was not sent to him.

Osborne also testified that some of the information he was given in November 2006 was not relayed to the public through a media briefing the next month.

Tilley resigned his post last July, after government expressed its displeasure with how he was managing a separate crisis, involving a review of the work of a suspended radiologist.