Rachael Michelle Rapraeger, a senior technologist at a small community hospital south of Atlanta, came clean to authorities after questions were raised about mammograms being signed off by radiologists who were not even on duty at the time.
Rapraeger admitted to forging negative results because she couldn’t be bothered to fill out the proper paperwork.
Her laziness almost proved a death sentence for Sharon Holmes. She was shocked to discover that she had aggressive stage 2 breast cancer in 2010 – just months after she had been given the all clear from her doctor after receiving a mammogram at the hospital where Rapraeger worked.
Holmes, who has been four years cancer free since undergoing a successful surgery soon after the cancer was discovered, was horrified to learn of what had been going on after her shock second diagnosis.
“I’m thinking I’m doing what I’m supposed to do, getting my tests done, and then I find out someone else isn’t doing their job,” Holmes told The Associated Press.
Holmes, 49, testified against Rapraeger but isn’t the only victim of the careless medical tech.
Mary Brown had received the green light from her doctor after one of Rapraeger’s mammograms in August 2009 but when she was contacted by the hospital in May 2010 to come back for another the news wasn’t the same.
Brown had her right breast removed to treat the cancer that the doctors had found but the 78-year-old counts her blessings for the slow-growing tumour that was initially missed.
According to NBC News reports Rapraeger’s lawyer, Floyd Buford said his client had given more than 1300 women their results by assuming the identities of physicians on the hospital computer system to avoid the time-consuming paperwork required to reach a formal diagnosis.
Rapraeger told authorites she had personal issues that stopped her from caring about her job and that the work had stacked up so much she felt overwhelmed.
This month she was sentenced to serve up to six months in a detention centre with 10 years on probation. She was also ordered to pay a $12,500 fine and banned from working in the health industry.
