Is This PR? (Post 4) Eastern Health Scandal
In early 2005, Eastern Health discovered errors in its hormone receptor tests for breast cancer patients. Patients who had been tested from 1997 through 2005 were affected by the errors. At least 27 patients died due to the errors out of the 386 who received inaccurate tests.
Immediately, the company’s President should have begun apologizing to patients through the media and the company should have begun implementing its crisis communication plan. Instead, Eastern Health practiced bad PR.
Eastern Health delayed telling affected patients and the public about the errors through the summer of 2005. The company would have waited even longer, but the media beat them to it by revealing the story in October 2005.
It took the company until the summer of 2008 to send apology letters to all patients affected. The company should have also immediately accepted responsibility for its actions and informed all patients that they could be affected. Eastern Health did not let its patients know there was a problem and they might be affected.
To further complicate the disaster, Eastern Health’s Director of Communications, Susan Bonnell, begged a national PR firm for advice on how to handle the situation. She revealed that the company did not have a crisis communication plan to adequately handle the testing errors.
Eastern Health’s own PR person did not know how to handle the crisis, could not handle the crisis, and decided to reveal this to the public.
Not only did this crisis demonstrate how unprepared Eastern Health is for a crisis, the company lost its patients’ and the publics’ trust. Due to Eastern Health’s poor PR choices, it will be decades before the company regains a reputation of openness, trust and honesty with the public.