Kelley Tuthill's Blog: Mammography Investigation

BOSTON -- In 1992, Congress approved the Mammography Quality Standards Act.

It established quality control standards for more than 10,000 U.S. medical facilities that perform and interpret mammography tests. Advocates who pushed for it wanted to ensure that women would know their mammograms are of top quality.

Every facility that performs mammography has to be certified by FDA to continue to operate legally. The rules cover equipment, personnel and practices at mammography facilities.

Massachusetts Department of Public Health also conducts its own yearly inspections and some of its regulations are stricter than the FDA's. But neither government agency makes its inspection reports available in a form that's easily accessible to the public.

Team 5 Investigates spent three months gathering the reports because believe or not, in Massachusetts these are all paper files. There is no comprehensive computer database of the reports.

We focused our reporting on centers where inspectors repeatedly found Level 1 violations, the most serious. We made every effort to understand what was going on in the facility and gave operators a chance to respond.

A team of producers from Team 5 Investigates worked to put the most recent inspection results on-line for you. The state said it would have done the same, but does not have the personnel.

Kelley Tuthill
Team 5 Investigates