Vickie Kaminski, the newly appointed CEO of Eastern Health, said the authority must never forget what went wrong with hormone receptor tests. (CBC)

Newfoundland and Labrador health officials admitted Thursday that more than five dozen breast cancer patients had somehow been overlooked in a massive retesting program.

Eastern Health, speaking on behalf of three other regional health authorities, said that 65 patients in all had not been involved in a sweeping review of hormone receptor tests that were originally done between 1997 and 2005.

Of the 65 patients, 31 have died, newly appointed CEO Vickie Kaminski told reporters in St. John's.

"What we're trying to do is give assurances to everyone that we now have as complete a picture as possible on the ER/PR issue," said Kaminiski, referring to the estrogen receptor and progesterone receptor tests that Eastern Health suspended almost four years ago.

The tests play a critical role in a breast cancer patient's treatment, as they help determine if the patient can benefit from powerful but toxic antihormonal therapies like Tamoxifen.

Peter Dawe, executive director of the Canadian Cancer Society's division in Newfoundland and Labrador, said he is not surprised health officials continue to uncover cases of patients who should have had their test results reviewed.

Health authorities in Newfoundland and Labrador said Thursday a wide-ranging retesting program had somehow missed 65 patients. (CBC)

"They're still suffering the ramifications of the absolutely terrible job being done with data management," Dawe said after the update.

Meanwhile, Kaminski said it will be a few weeks before it is known which of the 65 patients ought to have been offered antihormonal therapy.

Eastern Health is hoping to be able to resume its own hormone receptor testing program by the fall.

Kaminski — who does not formally start her job until Monday — said the authority's staff will always work in the shadow of knowing that serious mistakes had been made in the past.

"We'll never forget this. This is something that should never be forgotten," she said.

"We should learn from this forever."

Eastern Health said all but one of the living patients have been notified, and the remaining woman was to be called soon.

Families of the deceased will receive letters by registered mail, Eastern Health said, following a recommendation made by Justice Margaret Cameron, whose report into flawed hormone receptor testing was released in March.

The number released Thursday is significantly higher than the 38 that Eastern Health disclosed in April in a controversial release issued late on a Friday afternoon.

That release triggered an angry reaction from Premier Danny Williams and others, although documents obtained this month by CBC News showed that Eastern Health issued the update under heavy government pressure, and despite internal warnings that authority staff were still trying to come to grips with the oversight.

"The reasons vary as to why cases were missed in the original search process," Eastern Health said in a statement.

"In some instances, the cases were missed due to incomplete manual searches and incomplete or non-standard coding practices. For half of the cases, an explanation for why these were missed could not be determined."

Latest in a saga

The revelation is the latest in a saga of oversights and mistakes that have plagued Eastern Health, which runs a pathology lab that serves all of Newfoundland and Labrador.

Eastern Health began retesting the results of its hormone receptor tests in 2005, when it first learned it had problems with how the complicated tests were being conducted in the St. John's pathology lab.

Government called a commission of inquiry in 2007, when it emerged that Eastern Health managers knew that the hormone receptor testing problems were far more grave than the authority had led the public to believe.

Even during the course of Cameron's inquiry, it emerged that Eastern Health still did not have a good handle on the scale of the problem. In 2008, government ordered the Newfoundland and Labrador Centre for Health Information to create a new patient database.

Cameron ultimately found that problems in the pathology lab were due to numerous factors, including faulty preparation, poor handling, inadequate training and deficient supervision.

During the course of her inquiry, Cameron was told that various hospitals used different methods of keeping records, and that there was no one unified way of keeping track of tests and procedures.