State Seeks to Revoke Pap Lab’s License

State Health Services Director Kenneth Kizer announced Wednesday that he and Atty. Gen. John K. Van de Kamp will go to court in an effort to revoke the medical license of Central Pathology Services Medical Group in Tarzana.

Kizer ordered Central Pathology shut down last week after a March inspection found that the lab had misdiagnosed 21% of a randomly selected group of 1,103 Pap smears.

“There is no guarantee that two months from now, they won’t say, ‘The state didn’t take away our license. We’ll just reopen,’ ” Kizer said at a press conference outside Central Pathology’s offices. “Obviously, we are not going to allow an operation to continue that has this sort of error rate.”

Central Pathology processed nearly 700,000 Pap smears a year, including more than half of all those taken in Southern California. Pap smears are used by physicians to detect cervical cancer and other medical abnormalities in women.

Kizer has also ordered the lab to contact hundreds of thousands of women whose Pap slides showed no abnormalities and offer to pay for retesting.

Bid to Ease Fears

The Department of Health Services director said he came to Los Angeles to ease public fears over the number of errors Central Pathology allegedly made in diagnosing slides. Kizer recommended that women contact physicians and clinics that administered their Pap tests. “There is no reason to panic,” Kizer said. “There is reason to be concerned.”

A spokesman for Van de Kamp confirmed that the attorney general will join Kizer in seeking to take away the lab’s license.

The Department of Health Services issues operating licenses to labs but state law requires a judge’s approval to revoke a license.

Kizer’s announcement surprised Central Pathology’s executives. “We weren’t even notified of this event,” said Martin Cooper, a company spokesman.

Cooper reiterated that “we believe that the lab has high quality-control standards.”

Central Pathology’s closure has created an overwhelming volume of new business for other Pap labs. Some have reported turning down requests to handle Pap smears from former Central Pathology clients.

“We recognized that the action taken against this laboratory is going to result in some problems here in Southern California,” Kizer said. “There is going to be a bit of a backlog.”

Kizer also elaborated on plans for stricter oversight of Pap smear labs, including limits on the number of slides cytotechnologists may read per day, a licensing program for technologists and closer inspection of labs.

At present, for example, state inspectors do not examine actual Pap slides during visits. Central Pathology said it had passed more than 20 annual inspections.

“I did not realize (inspectors) were not doing that kind of quality assurance,” Kizer said. “That is part of what we are going to be doing and redoing in the future.”

During the next six weeks, state investigators will inspect 10 other Pap labs in California. There are about 500 Pap smear companies in California.

“Many of the problems that have resulted here (at Central Pathology) are because of lack of adequate management oversight, lack of supervision of the technologists and other things that are peculiar to this lab,” Kizer said. “Perhaps they have spent more attention on their marketing department than on their quality assurance department.”