CervicalCheck increases eligibility

Written by Nick O'Donoghue Monday, 01 December 2008 14:29

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Women below the CervicalCheck age range who have had smear tests before September 1 will be eligible for repeat testing under the programme, the ICGP Win­ter Meeting 2008 was told.

Head of cervical screen­ing at the National Cancer Screening Service (NCSS) Dr Marian O’Reilly said that it had been decided to include this group of women in the scheme because Irish cytology labs are no longer providing smear-testing services.

“Because we had an issue in September with Irish cytology labs ceasing to provide a service, we have decided that through CervicalCheck to honour any normal smear test in women under 25 that you had in practice on or before September 1.

“It’s a clear issue for you as a GP, and we’ve decided to honour any repeat tests and deal with them throughout this time. Obviously that will be a self-limiting group and they will be absorbed into the normal screening prog­ramme age group anyway,” she said.

Added to this group, women aged over 60 who have not had a smear test or are unknown to the programme will also be eligible for a test. Dr O’Reilly said that once these women returned a negative smear, they will then be no longer eligible for Cervical­­Check.

She urged GPs to take ownership of the programme and to be proactive in encouraging women to take part in it. “The ethos of the Cervical­­Check screening programme is that it is a primary care-based screening test. Take ownership of this prog­ramme, it’s your programme, you can call in, actively be enterprising, write to women aged 25 to 60 in your practice and say ‘come on in, schedule an appointment for a free smear test’.

“You can have a practice nurse do it and you will be paid and the woman will be managed through the prog­ramme that way,” Dr O’Reilly added. Dr O’Reilly also told GPs that all colposcopy smear tests, regardless of what age the women are, will be covered under the scheme from January.

At the conference, she announced that ProMed has been awarded the contract to supply the disposable speculae for CervicalCheck smear tests and GPs will be able to order through a dedicated email address available online at www.cervicalcheck.ie.

She added that a quality assurance publication of standards will be available in September 2009, but recommended that GPs self-audit after every 30 smears currently.